October

I love the idea of gathering objects from the wood; to use them to record the changes over time. Story and place coming together.

I was absorbed today amongst the trees; the harsh call of the rooks as they circled above me and the occasional soft thud of the sweet chestnuts as they fell from the branches. I bound feathers with twine to twigs that curved around my palm. Dipped in black ink they swoop across the paper creating the silhouettes of the trees.

November

It's cold, my fingers feel numb, but the sun lights up the bronze leaves that still cling to the trees. There is a distant hum of traffic. Standing still on the autumn leaves. I could hear a faint groan, a twig snapped. Five deer appeared, the white at their throats glimmered, and they held their heads high as they leapt through the undergrowth following a path. Earlier I had followed their footprints in the mud, brushing through nettles and brambles to find old sheds sitting quietly decaying in the woods. Fairy-tale houses scattered along the deer path.

December

A clear cold day in the midst of days of rain.

We strung up a washing line between the trees and turned a rusty abandoned plough into a makeshift camp.  Foraging for forest objects, I came across the bones of a wild clematis twined and twisted around the lower branches of a fir tree. Snippets from the ends of the branches yielded miniature tree like offerings. I gathered long trails of ivy on this midwinter day.

Throughout the day, as we worked, the water rose up from the earth so with each step we sunk deeper into the watery soil. We exposed onto cyanotype paper images from the woods,

January

It's definitely winter here now. The only flashes of colour are the scattered holly leaves on the forest floor. Dark glossy green where they have landed right side up and where they have flipped over,  a much lighter green. Starting to look closely the colours of this winter wood – grey, silver, green, browns. The wind is strong today. As I walked the path by the side of the wood a big old oak tree groaned as the wind circled it, protesting as if it’s joints were being buffeted by the gusts. The wind picks up and dies down, the old tree creaks and snaps.  The pale winter shines sunshine silver through the canopy.

April

 April showers.  The sound of raindrops hitting the hood of my jacket so I feel as if I am in a tent. I'm sitting in a tiny copse of trees by an uprooted tree, the roots encased in hard earth. there is something about those tangled roots that reminds me of an altar. So much birdsong today, calling to each other across the tree tops, the different notes weaving in and out of each other punctuated every now and again by the hum of a car engine. The wind picks up in gusts and blows through the tree tops so that the trees become full of sound. A pair of blue tits are playing hide and seek on a fallen log in front of me.

May

The birds are noisy, the woods are full of sound, the constant hum of planes as they fly above the cloud with the birdsong  sitting beneath them. As I lean against the tree, writing this I can hear something clucking and chattering away to my right and watch as rain spots  patterns in the shallow stream. I want to cast small things today. Tiny ferns still curled like little fossils, miniature oak leaves that seem to  unfurl before my eyes. I am content just to be here, even though I'm not really sure where I'm heading. I just need to trust the process.

June

Midsummer in the woods.

On the forest floor, under this tree are twigs, tiny, thin, thick, short.

Leaves in varying stages of decay pile upon one another on bark covered earth

The whole tree cycle has fallen to the ground.

Green blades of grass pushing through the moss.

A stately ring of nettles surround the quiet of the clearing.

A clump of purple foxgloves break up shades of green.

Lean against the tree, my spine against its spine.

July

It feels a little bit like fairy land today with the floating seed clouds, the tiny flowers, everything is in miniature enclosed in this space, with the grunt and rumble of the human world kept at bay. Little pockets of cuckoo spit nestle in the heart of mint leaves and in the crease of the blades of grass. A pale green eggshell lies on the path. 

Rust dying. I've soaked various fabrics in strong tea and wrapped a rusty old plough with the damp cotton. This process is impossible to control, but that’s what excites me.  I will leave the fabric here for a week. It will rain. The wind will dry it. The sun will bleach it.

September

I'm noticing the alders more today because they are on my mind.  My story, the bits of research that captured my imagination have begun to weave into the work.  I'm thinking about the puppets and the essence of this watery world, so I can shape it to reflect what I have seen, collected, felt, imagined and read about. It is all coming together and that in turn, brings forth new ideas. I'm not sure I want to end this project, not quite ready to leave these woodlands.