Beatrix Potter Birthday

 

Beatrix Potter

 1866-1943

 “There is something delicious about writing the first words of a story. You never quite know where they'll take you.” 

Beatrix Potter is famous for the children's books she wrote and the animal characters she created.  Her lovely stories and drawings continue to bring pleasure to millions of children today. They are an enchanting way of introducing them to the natural world and developing empathy and compassion for living creatures.

But she gave in others ways too. She had close links with the National Trust and was a friend of Canon H.D Rawnsley, one of the  founder members of the National Trust.  On her death, she left them 4000 acres of land and countryside and 14 farms.  In accordance with her wishes, the farms are still working farms managed by tenant farmers and their families. 

 “Thank God I have the seeing eye, that is to say, as I lie in bed I can walk step by step on the fells and rough land seeing every stone and flower and patch of bog and cotton pass where my old legs will never take me again.” 

 http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/article-1356396009885/

 http://www.peterrabbit.com/en/beatrix_potter/lake_district/the_world_of_beatrix_potter_attraction

Thoughts on the Wind

 

“It is a pitiful degeneracy in our modern life that we are not more often transported out of ourselves by the eternal things that surround us.

Consider the wind!  One of the best tests you can apply to yourself as to whether you are lost to the primeval grandeur of the world, taking it all for granted, is to note your attitude to the arbitrary motions of the wind.  Do you take the wind for granted? 

 Do you only notice it at all if it is wildly furious, madly violent, bitterly freezing?  Or, on the other hand, is the least breath of it upon your face like the touch of the remote Past?  

Do you never feel it without thinking what a miraculous phenomenon it is, this invisible and yet most living presence, as it moves over the city, over the land, over the sea?  Nothing can excel the wind in awakening from the depths of our natures those far-away memories which seem to carry with them the very essence of life..."

John Cowper Powys

(1872-1963) 

A Philosophy of Solitude 

Robert Graves Birthday

 

 Robert Graves (1895-1985)

 AN ENGLISH WOOD 

 This valley wood is pledged
To the set shape of things,
And reasonably hedged:
Here are no harpies fledged,
No rocs may clap their wings,
Nor gryphons wave their stings.
Here, poised in quietude,
Calm elementals brood
On the set shape of things:
They fend away alarms
From this green wood.
Here nothing is that harms -
No bulls with lungs of brass,
No toothed or spiny grass,
No tree whose clutching arms
Drink blood when travellers pass,
No mount of glass;
No bardic tongues unfold
Satires or charms.
Only, the lawns are soft,
The tree-stems, grave and old;
Slow branches sway aloft,
The evening air comes cold,
The sunset scatters gold.
Small grasses toss and bend,
Small pathways idly tend
Towards no fearful end. 

Contemplating Nature

“Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature -- the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.”

Rachel Carson in Silent Spring

http://kathyroscoe.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/going-home.html

 http://kathyroscoe.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/the-face-of-flower.html

 http://kathyroscoe.blogspot.co.uk/2014_12_01_archive.html

 http://kathyroscoe.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/time-to-stop-and-stare.html

Nature Worship

"Not to worship the sun and moon and earth and sea, and each one of the planets and stars, is to make a pompous ass of yourself."

John Cowper Powys

(In Defence of Sensuality)