the field student returned to the medlar

Medlar - 13th June 2013

a field study of a forest garden

Forest garden edge - 11th June 2013

Forest garden edge - 16th June 2006

a field study of scratches amongst the fruits of peasant labour, Sunday 9th June 2013.

Ashmead's Kernel 

D'Arcy Spice 

Fig 

Glow Red Williams (pear) 

Irish Beauty 

 Kidds Orange Red

Medlar 

Merton Joy 

Rev' Wilks

Field Study's Man in E17 and I have been wondering about how these studies of apples (and other fruits) will appear on the screens of various devices around the world. What will become of the subtle blush of the Rev' Wilks as it makes it's way into the blogosphere? Interestingly, Blogger's US spell check does not accept 'blogosphere' and the correction it suggests is 'biosphere'. I tried a compromise in the word, 'biogosphere'. The field student sees a lack of focus and purposeful direction or application in the field research. The word 'facile', encountered during a reading of Richard Mabeys, 'Nature Cure' (Commonplaces), pricked our conscience, like the worcesterberry thorns pricked and pierced us as we crawled about the forest garden taking snaps. Our flesh is scratched with squiggly red lines bearing a remarkable similarity to the spell check signs. 'Biogosphere' brought a particularly deep scratch. The field student (or Julian Beere) is a lesser mortal making an effort to bring something more than a superficial look at and account of the complexities and subtleties of the allotment and forest garden sites. What are we doing here; presenting, re-presenting? What are these pictures and texts emanating out of, to continue with thoughts provoked by Mabey's appreciation of John Clare as 'a representative, a steward in a political sense'?

found document

We found this document folded up in a pocket of a coat returning to nature in the increasingly unsheltering (ouch! Another scratch!) shed. We hesitated before committing what may be an archaeological faux (**!!***) pas by unfolding it, scanning it and publishing it. The document is featured as way of trying to put the snaps in a more purposeful and informed context.

Fortunately, Field Study's Man in E17 was called out by a person on business from Porlock........

Poppy - 8th June 2013

Field Study's Man in E17 spent 6 years in the Quantocks trying to walk in the footsteps of one their more eminent residents, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He wonders if he should have or could have kept a closer connection with the area, as a way of keeping to or following the right path; a path worthy of the education he received during those 6 years, 1976-1982. The last time he visited the Quantock Hills was 4th August 2002, when he enjoyed a fabulous walk in all the stunning poetry of the place, and the walk was so pleasurable he temporarily forgot a personal crisis he had been experiencing very intensely at the time. A cool, fragrant estuarine breeze swept up from the Severn over the moors and through the forest to swirl around a meadow, tall with elegant grasses, encircling the field student standing in the centre of the sway. He was quite overwhelmed and inebriated by the rhythmical circularity of it all. He thinks he made a decision then that resonates within him to this day, that is if any one decision can truly be more important, if not separate, than another.That decision, in his tangled collection of decisions, was to carry on to Salisbury rather than to return to London. The return to London happened sooner and more acrimoniously than he expected. So yesterday, all those moments on from the communion with Coleridge's lost lines, Field Study's Man in E17 found and lost himself in the pleasures of a forest garden on the edge of a different forest, haunted by another poet, John Clare.

 'While many a flower unfolds its charms to view' (Summer, John Clare) 

............and missed his deadline for the report of 8th June 2013.

a field student turns back time to be in time for the first flower of the bramble hedge to open but in the future he was still too late

At 23 minutes past a witching hour 'Field Study's Man in E17' tapped into the supernatural forces of the site and caused time to turn back so that he can continue to fool himself he is reporting daily on his allotment field studies. It was early Saturday morning however FSMiE17 needed it to be Friday to avoid the failure and humiliation of a missed deadline. A simple sequence of clicks on the 'Post settings - Schedule' menu allows for this deceit; well a deception it would be but for the brutal honesty of the field student in his undeceiving deceptions.

At 39 minutes past the witching hour he took me here and then there (above) and pointed to the first of the bramble flowers (below) to open. Is this the first, the very first, flower of the whole hedge? The field student tends to think he is so 'with it', as in the allotment site, that he can be there for the first flowering emanations of it's perennials. 'Look! There are thousands of them to come!' I thanked the field student for taking me back to the first flower however I feared his vanity and egotism,in part fueled by the seductive forces of the site, had triggered a timequake. Readers of Kurt Vonnegut will know this can be, depending on the time, a laughing and/or no-laughing matter. What happened, what is 'Timequake' about, what was it about? Have I forgotten? Will I have to read it again? Will I forget the moment I start reading? The field student pretended to be more familiar with the novel (and the asynchronous Kilgore Trout) and speculated obtusely that each and every flowering will take me back to the first. I have to confess I was terrified and that what ensued was an episode of shuddering florophobia. 

Blackberry - 7th June 2013

At 81 minutes past the witching hour he recalled another plant in bloom beneath the dense bramble canopy. The field student thinks it is an allium.

in a field of raspberry blows

Netted raspberries 6th June 2103

a swim in the field with Heqet, Heqat, Hekit, Heket, Hegit, Heget and pale Hecate

Frog - 1st June

Our man in E17 has found himself emerging from the 5th night of a very dark state of mind in which, 'nature seems dead and wicked dreams abuse'.* What or where is the source of the darkness? Some days ago the field student sank into the glistening darkness of a frog's eye. The caws of fox mobbing crows echoed and ricocheted murderously around him as he disappeared into a field of vision he had only imagined. He told me, even though he has been there (in the darkness of a frog's eye) he still thinks he is imagining it rather than remembering it. 'What is it that makes you think that?' I asked him.

*Macbeth, Shakespeare.