Seasons Greetings.

Seasons Greetings.

I went for a walk in the woods one evening with my dog. It was not snowing but heavy snow was still around, it was getting darker all the time. The whiteness of the snow kind of reflected everywhere and created its own light. I felt I was walking in a David Attenborough documentory one minute, next I was a character in an East European fairy tale, then while passing through a section of fir trees I felt like Sitting Bull refusing to live on a reservation land and living wild as Indians had always done, through yet another harsh winter. 

The following day I went back to the woods with my camera and four sticks which I had wrapped wool around. I placed these sticks in the trees and photographed them. Then I used the photo as an emailable xmas card.

It is at this point that I had best explain the thing with sticks with wool wrapped around? At the end of each month I collect 4 sticks from the woods and wrap wool around them in colours that I think represent the month just past, one stick for each week so as to record any gradual changes. Then I take them back to the woods and photograph them. I started doing this in July10 and will continue until July11, thus creating a series of photos which record the passing of a year, week by week, month by month. So I used one of my December Sticks photos for a xmas card. 

Taking Your Dog To Work With You.

The only other time I can think of an example of this, was when I visited a very very posh school like Hogwarts in the Weald of Kent. I met two art teachers who greeted me in the car park with a couple of terriers. I could not stop thinking what it would have been like if I had taken a Jack Russel with me back when I was at my compreshensive school? We walked around the school grounds, it was a kind of open air meeeting on the move with dogs. That was exactly what we did the other day except I brought my own dog along! You must be in the right job if you can take your dog to work with you?

We walked around what is called at the moment 'the wheel chair path'. This was with staff from Kent Wildlife Trust, another terrier called Fletcher and Cosmo. We pooled our ideas together to start designing a woodland trail. This already has a new firm walkway  just over a mile long so wheel chair users are encouraged to enjoy the woods. We are now looking to install sensory features and other artworks and points of interest along this route.

the trees are bare now and you can see more clearly how the wood passes from one area to another

We have made a list of 21 features which has some very optomistic ideas and others which are much smaller and easily achievable. Design workshops/field trips will be arranged with some local schools to move this forward and generate community interest in changes happening in the Blean Woodlands.

My next task then is to construct some kind of visualisation of the proposed elements along this trail and how these things can be realised, what they are made of and how they are constructed. Some features will require skills and knowledge from other people or organisations, including volunteers labour to carry out, make and install these things.

I have just picked 3 random numbers between 1-21 and these are my notes for what corresponds to

No.4: The Heron. A symbol of the Herne Bay area. A giant woven sculpure using willow or chestnut. Story teller to visit schools to generate creation stories/ local myths about herons and why they are significant to the area. (My childrens school badge has a heron on even).

No.15: Semi curcular seating area. Cut from secret oak store for special items? Carvings inspired by woodland flora and fauna and the designs generated from school workshops on this bench.

No.20: Entrance feature to wheel chair path created from two odly curved pine tree trunks. The curves enable an arch to be constructed, this would resemble a 'whale bone jaw'. It would be very big.

Cosmo in a freezing cold stream
(even in the winter with ice foating in it he does this!)

Cosmo came home and lazed about for the rest of the day laying across doorways blocking entrances, just generally flaked out after a busy morning looking for squirrels and searching for whatever it is he is looking for

Noisy in a Quiet Place.

I took a whole car full of stuff down down to the Hospital, I had sticks, wood, screws, drills, saws, work benches, extension cables, protective sheeting, brooms and dust pans. In fact I had so much stuff I took my wheel barrow (with statutory flat tyre) to ferry everything from car the working space.



our bird boxes were fab.



Lot's of drilling and noise, they must notice the difference when we show up. It's noisy in a very quite place.



Staff from Kent Wildlife Trust making a noise and a mess.

  I was talking about Yugoslavia, next thing I know the staff at KWT are making more noise than the rest of us put together. We all drew, owls, or other birds, trees, flowers, suns or mushrooms, something on these bird boxes so a lot of routing out of designs and drilling done in this session. In total we made four bird boxes with one gone for xmas present somewhere. So maybe any future nesting birds in there wont be in the grounds of St. Martins!

We also carried on with our terraced housing insect home.

This has been an ongoing construction for a couple of weeks now, with more still to do. I am hoping the next session will finish it. There is a lot of sawing to cut the canes and sticks to 8 inches long to fit the living rooms. So a range of activities this week with one more bird box to make and designs for two, plus the insect home, there's still enough for one more session. Encouraging conversations about carrying on with the work here. Even suggestions about a trip to the woods, not sure about the logistics, paperwork and even van hire on that suggestion. The aim here would be to collect stuff from the woods, bring it back to make things for the hospital grounds. Might be ambitious that, but personally I feel it as an aspiration for this programme.



The insect homes are shaping up, one final session should see it through.

I must remember to bring some mud next week to put in the ends where the windows are. Some insects will choose to live in the soil while most in the cavities between the sticks. I am looking forward to placing these in the grounds of St. Martins. 

I must thank the volunteers who cleared up afterwards, we did make a mess and I was talking not tidying so many thanks for that...... much appreciated.



Cave Art Bird Boxes.

I read that bird boxes are best made from sawn timber. This is a little rougher than the silky smooth creamy 'planed all round' which looks really nice, but is actually probably rubbish for bird boxes then?. As sawn was unavailable in the sizes I wanted, I had to buy PAR. The reason sawn is best the text said, was because the young birds inside the box are able to get a grip on the rough vertical inner face of the box and climb out of the hole and learn to fly.
That sentance stayed with me, I imagined young birds trying to get out..... But a house which your children can't get out of is a pretty major factor if you are deciding to buy it. As a solution I thought perhaps just nail a thin strip or two to create a ladder, then I thought carve grooves with a router might be a more realistic bird environment immitation.


Then it went off the track a bit, and the bird boxes we will make at St. Martins will have pre-historic style cave paintings in these bird dwellings. They wont be paintings they will be 'routings'. Drawings of birds on all four inner faces of the bird box. The young birds in there will be able to climb around in there, building up their perching muscles all day long. I imagined it would be like a rock climbing wall in there?

my prototype bird box with 'cave routings' to decorate the inside. 

Carved pictures of birds flying, perching, feeding combined with universal symbols such as the sun and stars. I will even put some trees in there so the birds are well prepared for their adult life!

  

The prototype in my garden. I put designs on the outside as well. 

I thought the friends at St. Martins could draw trees and birds and the like and I will carve them out with my router. Cave art for birds.

Terraced Insect Homes.

This blog picks things up kind of midway, and will follow things onto a conclusion next year. I have run a few workshops now with the Friends for Mental Health at St. Martins Hospital in Canterbury. This session was to construct some insect homes which will be placed somewhere in the hospital grounds.

After a nervous start the service users began using saws, cordless screw drivers and hand held tools to construct a row of terraced houses. I had brought with me  'a couple I had made earlier' and others in 'flat pack' Ikea like style that required assembly and screwing together.



we worked in teams of two, to cut sticks and bamboo to the right length

'measure twice make once'



End of terrace.  The end sections will eventually be filled with mud,
as some insects like living in the soil.



The lower section is where my friend is placing sticks collected from the Blean Woods. The upper sections are filled with hollowed out bamboo is to encourage bees.

detail: Rooms to let.

The whole terrace, more sticks required.