Season Finale
and a special something for you to unfurl ...
As much as my mind wants to imagine it as a gentle, flickering soft-focus twinkle of a time of year, December invariably shows up instead as the rapidly pulsing setting on the fairy lights that no sane person choses. The one that has you recoiling and hastily pressing at the controls to stop frantic, seizure-inducing near stroboscopic PAIN jabbing at your eyes.
As if there wasn’t enough activity and nativity going on this month, it’s also when my birthday falls. Oh, and my son’s too; we’re birthday twins you see, December 11th the both of us. Yay! Faux yelp of delight.
By way of celebration, I’ve a big birthday offer to share with you ...
This is a photograph I took just before my / our birthday.
I offer you ‘Season Finale’, a frosted gift as this year dies back and we prepare to unfurl ourselves into a fresh twelve month cycle.
All new paid subscriptions taken before December 20th will receive ‘Season Finale’ as well as a bracken big 50% off the annual subscription fee for one year. Subscribe here.
‘Season Finale’ is available in both colour and black and white.
Each is an A2 sized printable 300dpi ( nerdy tog speak for high resolution ) photograph.
Opt for either the colour version of the photograph or the black & white copy by simply stating colour / B&W in chat once subscribed. Big apols, I know this may be one choice too far in this maddeningly decision-heavy month. Sorry.
I made this photograph on the heathland where I walk our dog each day.
Ferns hold special appeal for me and these giant fiddleheads sprawl in abundance across this particular cattle-grazed land along the Sussex / Hampshire border.
There’s something ancient and mysterious about ferns. They’re the oldest plants on the planet, having repeatedly unfurled their Fibonacci finery almost unchanged for some 240 million years.
I find them beautiful at every stage of their life cycle. As bonny in crisped bronze as they are all juicy green, fresh and tightly coiled in springtime. They remind me of the cyclical and seasonal nature of life and of lessons which we ‘think’ we’ve learnt but which then come spiralling around again to revisit us in another version. Ouch.
The Victorians were mad for ferns. Fern fever - otherwise known as Pteridomania - was a bona fide cultural craze during the early 1800s which united people from all demographic groups within society. Gardeners continue to welcome their fragile fronds as shady border bedfellows in our contemporary gardens. I’ve two inked ferns which unfurl up my arms.
Back in the days of nineteenth century botany, with the arrival of improved rail links and an emerging road network, the Victorians were willing to travel in order to indulge this new trend and to gather live plant samples for their collections at home. Collectors would source specimen plants from all parts of the British Isles as well as clamour for exotic varieties from further afield in overseas woodlands.
I’ve been coming to march across this common land for two whole decades now, with a brief stateside interruption midway. Firstly, with one dog. He was the same rusty, golden shade as the bracken in fact and fully camouflaged against it. And now with another dog who is as monochromatic as the black and white picture above.
The pet trainer whose dogs recently starred in Rivals has her eye on this dog; she walks her impeccably behaved ‘pack’ on the same land along with an equally obedient parrot which flies alongside her shoulder. I know, so impressive, it’s a sight to behold.
‘He’s made for TV with that black patch across his eye’ she said. He’d make a dent to her earnings, I reckon, if she took him anywhere near a film set. He’s as chock full of issues as December is full of distractions.
I hope you chose to subscribe and that we can chat and share more stories in the New Year. I feel some writing about my dogs coming on soon and have lots of sweet pictures to share and some tragi-comic capers. Blimey, do I have some dog tales to regale anyone with a floppy, velvet or cocked (human) ear …
All new paid subscriptions taken before December 20th will receive ‘Season Finale’ as well as a bracken big 50% off the annual subscription fee for one year.
Could I take (and potentially re-post) a screen shot of your ferns? Will credit you of course. 🤞