Heat Waves

The heater is beginning to radiate warmth as it pinks and tinks with the expansion of the stainless steel. It gets very hot and the metal itself glows red in the dark, but its still only 9˚c inside the Egg and what burns to the touch barely registers beside the bed eight feet away.

It is still wonderful to just watch the flickering colours (the flames are hidden), in that pleasing empty headed way, that none the less always seems to let new thoughts spring to mind unbidden.

The heater burns charcoal, as well as drift wood when I can find (and dry) it. A single load will provide heat for around seven hours.

Ice Lines

The upper limit of the tide was defined by a rippling line of thin clear ice, where the saline water, fingering the same flat marshy river bank for three hours of slack water, froze at its extremities. A weak morning sun was enough to melt the evidence quickly away.

Orion

On January 23rd, I glimpsed Orion in the southern sky above the Isle of Wight, maybe hunting with an owl who was calling from somewhere close by. Since then however, he has mostly been hidden from sight above a succession of storms driven in off the Atlantic.

Orion’s mother was a great Queen of the Amazons, but he was a son of Neptune too, who reputedly walked on water and built up the sea defences of Sicily against an encroaching sea. I wonder about his perspective on our own rising waters and on going recent floods.

Orris Root

Following on from my previous posting, I can report that the search for orris root (an ingredient in the purification of Exbury Sea salt in the eighteenth century) has quickly proved fruitful. On a walk today with friends and with my neighbour’s dogs, I found the Iris Garden (in Exbury Gardens bordering my parish). However, I will remain on the look out for less cultivated evidence closer to home.

I realise I have encountered it already as a flavouring and aromatic in gin, and it is used mainly today in perfume. Its scent prevails over those of others in ‘Tumulte’ for example, a scent by Christian Lacroix or more obviously in ‘Infusion d’iris’ from Prada*. I may distill it as part of a unique essence of place for the Egg.

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orris_root

Molly Exploring the Iris Garden

Salt

I am living on the edge of an eighteenth century salt making landscape. Its many parallel banks and channels are like the teeth of a marshy comb, protected by the curving contours of the Outer Bank which was raised by hand to help retain sun reduced brine, before it was drawn off for boiling into salt. Sluice gate timbers at either end, completely refurbished in 1815, now stand rotten and ruined.

In homage to this land use of yesterday, I made salt by boiling ten litres of Beaulieu River water until it began to form crystals and placed the concentrated solution in an oven for 72 hours at 11o degrees, until salt formed. My 251 gms of yellowish crystals would have originally been whitened by adding egg white, alum, white lead, wheaten flour, butter and orrisroot* to the boiling process.

*The fragrant rootstock of the Iris Germanica. I will keep an eye out for the flowers this summer in case they still appear near the river, as living evidence of past industry.

The former salt making landscape of Exbury Farm and Stephen Turner’s ‘personal parish’.

Guillemot

A Guillemot perished on the western edge of my parish during the recent stormy weather. Spending most of its life at sea, it would only have chosen the land as a place to breed.

Pannage

Source: http-//www.thenewforest.co.uk/discover/pigs.aspx

Shadow Play

Moonlight through the tangled thorny forest of the blackthorn egg, cast ghostly reminders of wildwood onto the planed and tamed timbers of the Exbury Egg in the early hours this morning.

Nest Egg

I placed an egg of woven blackthorn in the thicket from which its twigs and small branches originally came. It is held together with ties of twine and will soon be slowly absorbed into the dense new growth of Springtime. Its spiny exterior surface and hollowed core, offers natural protection to the small nesting birds which make their home here. I will document the changes as days pass into weeks, as part of a meditation on the nature of habitats and the important symbolism of the Egg.

Backthorn twigs saved when pruning the thicket beside the Egg and woven into an Egg form - A mediation on the nature of habitats and the symbolism of theEgg.

The egg within the Egg

Photo: Nick Dawe

Achieving Clarity

The developing blackberry wine is looking very clear. After over a day of cleaning the Egg and my clothing of unwanted fungus (mould), it is pleasing to observe the benefit of a more welcome sort (yeast).