Kew. Every time we visit the great gardens, there are cute sights to carry away, even on a winter day and in lockdown time when major features such as the Temperate House and the Treetops Walk are closed.
One of many ingenious wicker animals, relics of the Kew Christmas festival.
Sweet chestnut from the northern Mediterranean region, a giant specimen whose swirling bark was used as model for the Whomping Willow in a Harry Potter film.
A little tree with spirally whorling branches, Prunus “Shirotae” of the rose family.
Shadow of a branch.
__________
This weblog maintains its right to be about astronomy or anything under the sun.
The photo of the branch shadow is very useful. In the 2D image, the branch appears to be resting on the ground for several feet before taking flight again. But, as spy photo analysts have long known, the details and truth lies in divining the shadows cast.
I didn’t know that, and it gives me a note to add to a memo I have about my paintings of shadows.
I see now that the reason the actual branch appears to touch the ground is that it happens to be against the background of another shadow, a distant and irrelevant one. That was a composition flaw that I;m glad I made.
The wicker fox is charming! How big is it? Are there wicker field mice? I suppose even if there were, they would be hiding from the fox.
The wicker fox was more than life size, perhaps three feet long. There were wicker birds and a badgerm I don;t remember any mice, The remains of the festival, which had had to be curtailed this year, were an amazing amount of light fixtures and such ornaments and of steel floors covering areas of the grass where sideshows or commercial displays had been. We’ll have to take it in next year.
Thanks. It helps to have a sense of scale. It really is ingenious, and charming.
Can you collect the chestnuts (about the last week in September I’d guess)?
I think the sign said that the sweet chestnuts at Kew – which are its oldest trees, having been planted in the previous estate – do produce edible chesnuts and that this is in October.
the patience of trees in winter, the constancy
to grow in one place and wait for warmth
to return.
Robin Beth Schaer, “Property” in Shipbreaking