It’s been a busy term at Under the Canopy including Maypole dancing, cheese rolling, flower pressing, blossom paintings, candles, glass painting, sunflower growing and more!!

And we fitted in a visit to the wonderful Leeds Museums Discovery Centre to look at their Herbarium collection.

Here’s a selection of images and poems….

At the Discovery Centre

Peter

Tongue touching

Dendrophylia

A learned man

John Grimshaw Wilkinson

Tree named by touch

Botanist flying blind

Warm or cold feel

Silent trees Pinus

Oak drums noisily.

 

Pressed flowers photographed by Lesley

Peter

Tennis Songs

Carousel spins

June is … middling cold

Bustin’ out we hear.

 

W. B. Yeats Day

A song of wandering

Abbey Theatre

Metamorphosis.

 

We paint our

Honey jars over

With glue acrylic

White then

 

Slight pressed

Flower blooms

Over topped

With Joy.

 

Peter

Strawberry teas

Sparing and sharing

Stolon extensions

Potted on plants.

Strawberries – group poem

First a delicate scent of sweetness,

Then the skin – red and dimpley and studded with yellow-green seeds.

Let the teeth sink in to reveal a soft pink heart, nestled in bright red flesh.

Some strawberries are tasteless, but these are wonderful –

Fresh and juicy, crunchy and sparkling,

Sherberty and full of wonder,

Exploding in your mouth like a nebula in the darkness of space.

They’re addictive, these strawberries …

 

Peter

Looking at nettle

as food

nettle as textile

rough threads

 

cleavers joined

together

into tramlines

a summer sports field

 

crushing

node knocking

stripping threads

of fibre life.

 

making the longest string of cleavers competition…

Yvonne’s hyacinth

Yvonne on pressing flowers

Press the flowers

Retain the memories

Fading colours

Like fragile moments in our lives

Captured between the pages of the press forever.

 

photos from Yvonne

 

Peter’s Hollybush pathway

printing from leaves

and some fabulous maypole dancing

see https://skippko.org.uk/under-the-canopy-in-may/ for more images from this term…