Lucy and I cloud watching from a walled garden on top of the North Downs. We brought blankets, flasks and far too many layers- as it was in the end quite a warm Spring day. But at least we were prepared!
Ribbon of contrail that looked like a twisted paper chain- this is a close up showing what looked like to us a DNA twist-.
Larger section of the sky- full size photo- capturing the vastness of the space above. We discuss the exhibition I saw back in 2014 at the Turner Contemporary in Margate- here is a video of the work by Edmund De Waal.
Cloud spotting fires the imagination- here I saw a turtle walking backwards- Lucy saw a Japanese fish woodcut. But for sure- in the centre is the moon. Zoom in to see its shiny half!
Text from the book ‘In the Meadows of Trimworth: a Kentish Country Diary’, by Richard Goodenough. Here he describes the cloud pattern named the ‘Folkestone Ladies’- properly- I was just a bit baffled when I was trying to explain it to Lucy!
Here we can see workers from Ripple Farm Organics harvesting their crops from within the walled garden. What did they think of our cloud watching activity?
One of Lucy’s wonderful cloud images recently on show in Bruce Williams’ Gallery in Whitstable. Her website is here. You can find her on Instagram here. Have a look at her Instagram grid for more meteorological beauty- big artwork that ‘took up space’ and ‘which was almost like dancing on the page, it was really physical’.
Another one of her pieces of work, showing detail of the hand cut stamps that she used to apply paint to the large pieces of paper. She says ‘I made stamps based on symbols found in old diagrams of clouds and the water cycle, especially those used to build up a repeated pattern, to reimagine my own versions but on a different scale.’
We were really lucky with the weather, we had a beautiful azure blue sky with white bright fluffy clouds with wonderful warm sunshine on our faces. I didn’t manage to photograph it, but high above us at one point there was a huge circling bird, playing on the thermals- maybe it was a hungry vulture and had seen us lying prone...
So many clouds- the walled garden acted as a great viewing arena for the day.
Layers of cloud.
Are these the ‘Folkestone Ladies’ coming over the hill?
As we were about to leave the clouds darkened and the tree surgeons who had given us a break of 20 minutes to do a recording (thanks chaps) started again with their onerous task, before any wind got up or rain came down. Photo by Lucy SS.
As we left the sky darkened, any warmth left too and we hurried back to the car.
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