A Remarkable Find

It seems to be the season for rediscovering long lost things for me at the moment. As I described in a previous post, I recently had returned to me a little book which I thought I had lost for good. Then, this evening, another discovery from the past came my way, of a different nature.

My hubby and I were watching “The Antiques Roadshow” on BBC TV this evening, and someone brought along a rather intriguing picture from the Arts and Crafts Movement, of a seascape in enamel, surrounded by a repousse frame made of silver, depicting various forms of marine life, and a circular-shaped piece of mother-of-pearl inlaid at the bottom. Embossed in the silver were the first two lines of a poem, “The sea hath its pearls/The heaven hath its stars,” which rather intrigued me for some reason, so on the spot I decided to google this and see if I could find the entire poem.

The first site I visited was “Writing and Ruminating: One Children’s Writer’s Journey.” I discovered that the poem was Das Meer hat seine Perlen by the German romantic poet Heinrich Heine, translated into English by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow as follows:

The sea hath its pearls,

The heaven hath its stars;

But my heart, my heart,

My heart hath its love.

Great are the sea, and the heaven;

Yet greater is my heart,

And fairer than pearls or stars

Flashes and beams my love.

Thou little, youthful maiden,

Come unto my great heart;

My heart, and the sea and the heaven

Are melting away with love!

On the site, I also discovered a painting of the same name, which had been inspired by he poem, by William Margetson, an English artist who lived from 1861 to 1940. On another site I discovered that the painting was purchased from the artist by The Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1897, where it still resides.

As soon as I saw this picture, my heart leapt. I had completely forgotten about it, but many years ago my grandmother had a reproduction of it in her home in Cambridge, where we spent many happy holidays. She came to live with us in 1963 when I was 10, and I don’t remember seeing the picture after this, so presumably it was among the many things she had to sell when she moved.

It was always said in the family that the young lady in the picture bore a striking resemblance to my grandmother when she was young, just after the First World War, probably because of the colour of her hair. Looking back, I remember now that I always believed that it actually was a picture of my grandmother!

I decided to make a new desktop wallpaper with this. Using a combination of Serif PagePlus (my desktop publishing software) and PhotoPlus (photo editor), I created a blue background on a layout to match the proportions of my computer screen. I took one of the texture overlays I created ages ago, from a photo of some tree bark with interesting swirling patterns on it:

and overlaid this on top of the blue background using the “screen” blend mode, and adjusted it until I was happy that it produced a subtle wave-like pattern in the blue, which would not interfere too much with the visibility of my desktop icons. I added the painting as a new layer, resized it and moved it to the right-hand side and added a vignette effect to it so that the edges would fade into the background. I exported the whole thing as a new image and set it as my desktop wallpaper.

Now I can enjoy it every day.

To stumble across this picture out of the blue like this, is amazing, and I feel as if a long-lost treasure has been restored to me. Isn’t the Internet wonderful? It is such a beautiful picture, and it ties in with my love of the sea, and my own lifelong delight in finding treasures on the seashore – maybe not actual pearls, but certainly many beautiful shells and stones, sea glass and driftwood, and it links me back to the past, with happy childhood memories.

This has quite made my day.

Outing to Paignton Zoo

This morning we made a really early start, to arrive in time for breakfast at Paignton Zoo. It was a church event, with the Bishop of Exeter attending. We had a choice of continental or full English breakfast (we both had the former) and it was delicious. There was a good crowd of people there and we made some new friends and met up with old ones too. After breakfast, the bishop spoke most entertainingly and movingly – I had not encountered him before and I was very impressed.

After this we decided to take advantage of where we were, and went round the zoo – it’s some time since we went. The weather was very overcast and showery but it didn’t spoil our enjoyment. Lots of photos follow! I also took some video clips but these need editing.

Pretty flamingos. Lots of ducks kept them company too.

Arum lilies growing beside the stream.

I love this elephant’s bottom! Unfortunately his front half isn’t the other side of the wall!

We can never visit the zoo without calling on the tigers. They are my favourite animals in the zoo, and today they really gave us a show. We thought they’d stay in their house because it was drizzling, but they came out and walked past us, and then played and rolled around together! They are sooo beautiful!

We found this plaque of a poem written by a six-year-old boy.

A Ural owl.

The lions were all out and about too, some on the roof of their house.

 

This funny little creature is a capybara from South America. It looked like an over-sized guinea pig!

Two camels, four humps. I think the further one has just told a joke because the nearer one looks as if he is laughing! What extraordinary looking creatures they are.

Here are the giraffes in their outside enclosure, enjoying an elevated snack. They are so slow and dignified and do everything in slo-mo, it seems.

The elephant came out to say howdy to the giraffes.

We went inside the giraffe house because we’d been told that a baby was born a couple of weeks ago – isn’t she absolutely adorable?

Beautiful giraffe fur.

Our little baby learning to groom herself.

She doesn’t have a name yet, and apparently they are running a competition to name her on Facebook.

Bluebells.

Black rhino. One lugubrious old gentleman.

Here is a creature I’d never heard of before, called a Coati. Not sure where it came from. It was trotting about, showing off its beautiful striped tail.

Suddenly it grabbed hold of some leaves and dashed off with them, disappearing inside its house. Making a nest perhaps, or wanting a snack in private.

When we were furthest away from the exit, my buggy battery decided to die intermittently – my hubby said he probably hadn’t charged it up for long enough. It had got very flat because I haven’t used it lately. It was fine going down hill but climbing the hills it kept cutting out so my hubby had to push me to give the battery a helping hand! NOT what we wanted – we got the buggy in the first place so that he wouldn’t have to push my wheelchair when I got too tired to do it for myself. We got back OK, and we swapped it for the wheelchair.

We went back to the restaurant and had lunch, and then had a lovely wander around the shop. I photographed a gorgeous little metal hanging fish, beautifully painted with an ombre effect. I edited out the background to show it off better.

Back view.

I fell in love with this painted metal chicken.

I thought there was lots of design potential in these – maybe to make in fabric or mixed media? Or just to draw, colour or fill with Zentangle.

Outside the entrance was this painted gorilla,

and also these banana trees.

Then back home, and I needed a rest!

Our Garden in April 2016

Today is such a lovely sunny day and things are looking so nice in the garden that I thought I’d take some photos.

All my hubby’s tremendous hard work is paying off. The rock garden is looking lovely and everything in the garden is starting to spout, gr0w and blossom. Wherever we’ve lived before we’ve had a larger garden, and he has been working full-time as well, so any time he had for gardening was taken up with maintenance and keeping the weeds at bay, and it is wonderful to see him now, so enjoying making our small garden into something special, and having time to be a bit more creative. So as you enjoy the following photos, remember that it is all my hubby’s hard work!

We recently had the cloudy kitchen window replaced with a nice new one, and for the first time I an see the rock garden in all its glory from the correct angle! Unfortunately the water feature doesn’t show up terribly well in photos but it’s there! It sounds lovely, too.

Beatrice enjoying the warmth of the rocks in the rock garden.

One of the little plants we bought recently. These are growing nicely, and have started flowering. Eventually they will cascade over the wall and fill the patio with colour.

More of the new plants in the rock garden.

Looking up the steps to the upper garden, to the left of the rock garden. You can see the outhouse at the bottom, and the garage at the top, and a lovely flowering shrub by the steps.

To the left of the steps, further along the back of the house, you come to Mum’s little patio. We have got gorgeous tulips out (and more to come in another trough).

Separating her patio from the upper garden is a grassy bank. There are quite a few primroses growing in this, and after they have finished flowering, my hubby is going to move some more down from by the garage, and maybe split some of the plants that are already there. Eventually it will be a whole primrose bank. There are also some ferns and other little plants growing amongst the grass, and along the top we’ve got a few lavender plants, which we hope will eventually become a lavender hedge.

Beatrice basking in the sun on top of the outhouse.

At the top of the steps. between the top of the rock garden and the garage, is a flatter bit with a bay tree (on the left in the photo - severely cut back – I was worried I’d have no leaves for my cooking this year but it’s sprouting again, and will be a nice rounded shape instead of the vast great tree it was!) and quite a lot of primroses. You don’t see these if you aren’t actually up there, so we are going to transplant some of these to the primrose bank. You can see the outhouse roof below.

A little bit further on, beyond the bay tree, we’ve got some rhubarb growing. This will be its second year and we hope for a good crop this year. The compost heaps are beyond. Phoebe likes sleeping in the compost heap!!

Looking down on Beatrice on the outhouse roof.

At the top of the steps. alongside the lawn, is a hedge of Photinia Red Robin, a gorgeous shrub whose new leaves are a glorious red colour.

On the other side of the path, against the garage wall, my hubby has put some recycled trellis that he got for nothing, and in the troughs underneath he’s planted some sweet peas. They are not tall enough yet to reach the trellis and he’s put in some little sticks for them to climb up, as a bridge so they can reach the trellis. They are still quite small, but starting to grow. You can see the apple tree on the left. We had a huge crop last year and they were delicious. In the corner beyond, we’ve got late raspberry canes, and again we had a good crop last year.

The apple tree has started to sprout! Soon it will be covered with apple blossom.

Here is Phoebe sunning herself and rolling around on the concrete path between the two patios – her favourite place on a sunny day!

Finally, a view of the fence to the right of the rock garden, showing the flowering shrubs in our garden and next door. We are quite pleased that that neighbour doesn’t clip his shrubs back because we get the benefit of them!

Later on, when I’ve finished painting the little flower boxes, I’ll take some more photos, to include the summer house and the other side of the garden.

You can see that we have a very pretty garden, and in the next few years as the new plants mature and grow, it is going to get better and better.

I am reminded of the beautiful little verse from the poem by Dorothy Frances Gurney:

The kiss of the sun for pardon,

The song of the birds for mirth,

One is nearer God’s heart in a garden

Than anywhere else on earth.