Roisin Markham

Monday was a bank holiday in Ireland, The clocks had gone back the day before, so I was awake up earlier then early. I let the dogs out and went out to the garden.

Fluttering around, that dawdling looking at nothing in particular but just noticing. A kind of meditation. It’s been raining and raining some more. But Monday morning early there were great fluffy clouds bouncing around the blue sky. The land is soaked, when you stop and listen you can hear the water running on the land. So that combination had me reaching for the camera.

The late Autumn Bronze Fennel is mostly umbels, the seed heads dramatic and visual wonderful what ever the season.

Nature and plants intrigue me.

There is a great quote by a brilliant photographer, I came across in university’s still think about it often. In fact I think about this woman’s work still.

Pick a theme and work it to exhaustion…

Dorthea Lange

How she related to photography and the camera as a tool in which to be present and edit the world, this blog post really and my fluttering with a camera lives into some version of that. Although her subject matter was people in the great depression and mine is nature as we move towards Climate breakdown. Her social justice work through her lens informed my photography (1989- 1994) and my social research practice (2005 – 2015).

I really wanted to mark the work I made Monday and the poem I wrote before lunchtime.

In the background of the Birch shot those brown stalks in the head are Herb Robert. A wild flower that is welcome to wonder in our rewilded garden.

It hosts multiple pink flowers on its stalk in summer, they give way to seed pods that split open, curling exposing fluffy elements with tiny seeds. The uncurled seed head get messy about now. But look at this beauty, the bowl of cobwebs, I’m imagining a great glass blower putting each of those drops individually on each string.

It’s exquisite. Nature is so full of beauty.

One of the other wonders this year is a new berry bush, planted late summer a Josataberry. I’ve never grown it before. As it’s settles in I’ve been marvelling at its stalks.

Joe and Claire from The Irish Forest Garden, in Kilmuckridge recommend it to me on a recent visit to their ARC. It was on my food forest list of plants to get but they moved up it’s getting & planting. When you ask stewards of the land what is their favourite berry then it need to get in the garden sooner rather than later.

Just looks at this stalk

Cobwebs and strings of raindrops everywhere but only a few plants and spaces invite me in, really made me look, sense, observe hard.

A failed experiment of basket tomatoes on top of a post is the perfect spot for a full spiders web. We can call it more traditional. I never get bored of looking at this amazing symmetry that’s spun by a spider to trap it’s food.

After fluttering till satisfied both of mind and camera, I came back in did my doodles, had a cup of tea and procrastinated on some personal work so well I wrote this poem, well it’s kind of a poem. First shared @creativedynamix on instagram.

the clock changing has me awake

wandering in the sodden garden,

bejewelled cobwebs absorb my attention

Autumns rawness devoid of summers blush backdrops the teeny tiny glistening gems

in particular the herb robert, bronze fennel, birch, jostaberry and even blanketing carpet camomile

droplets adorn them

spun webs glisten almost like lengthening the glimmer of the full moon

the intricacy a joy to behold

made easy to the eye by left over rain

enraptured I’m lost looking

trying to capture all that is just in front of me, oh but it be a sight for seven generations to come

Roisin Markham, poem written 30 October 2023

I’ve included some lines from this poem as part of my letter from a future ancestor in 2225. More on that later.

I’ve been wanting to write for a while, there are more serious things in the world going on but I oft need the garden as a breaker from the world full of manmade horrors. Nature is my salve. If I can share that, offer it to the world, it’s enough.

So for others who live in floods, droughts, war torn ravaged places, for those moving to fight for their existence, running from genocide. I acknowledge your pain and suffering, I see it. I use my public voice: posting on socials, supporting causes as I can, signing petitions, contacting my political representatives. I acknowledge my privilege and place of birth. I know I am luck to have a place to call home, an income & work, enough security physical & mentally to have fluttering time.

If your still reading to here, thank you! Here’s a bonus image.