Category Archives: Ceredigion present

The Elvis Rock

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by The Curious Scribbler

Following my recent much-read blog about the vandalism and prompt repainting of the Cofiwch Dryweryn wall near Llanrhystud several readers contributed comments on the familiar Elvis rock just over the Ceredigion border on the A44 at Eisteddfa Gurig which the unknown vandals appeared to be copying.

The Elvis rock at Eisteddfa Gurig

This too, is a reinstated version of a modified graffiti message. Originally painted on the rock in 1962 it represented electioneering support for Islwyn Ffoulkes Ellis, the Plaid Cymru candidate in a by-election.   This being the legal name  bestowed upon him at birth in 1924 it was necessarily spelled thus on the electioneering literature and the hoardings.  But he was not a successful candidate and is much better known as the Lampeter University academic and prominent Welsh author Islwyn Ffowc Elis.

This historic detail solves a problem which has long perplexed me:  How do you find the space to amend Elis to Elvis?

The original ‘Elvis’ has also been destroyed in the interim and has been repainted on a freshly cut face of rock. Now it sports an expansive V wider than the rest of the lettering, as my picture shows.

According to Gwylim writing last month in Ein Gwlad, the original artists of the original ‘Ellis’ were the late film director John Hefin and David Meredith, former Head of Press and PR at HTV and S4C. The original author of Cofiwch Dryweryn was the late Professor Mike ( later spelled Meic) Stevens. What a talented and scholarly lot these graffiti writers became!   Did they already consider themselves men of letters in their nationalist-slogan writing days?

 

 

Cofiwch Dryweryn

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by The Curious Scribbler.

I learnt on the Welsh News on Sunday that the graffiti on the wall beside to A487 just north of Llanrhystud has been vandalised once again, so I took a detour there today.  Imagine my surprise to find that the new daubing  ‘Elvis’ and a heart has already disappeared, to be replaced by the original message.  It has become quite a tourist attraction.  As I pulled into the adjoining layby I found another pilgrim like myself already bent on photography!

Passers by are stopping to admire the freshly repainted wall.

A quick search of Facebook reveals that a newly formed group styling themselves Welsh Independence Memes for Angry Welsh Teens lost no time in obliterating the substitution, toiling through the night to reinstate the old message.

The self appointed custodians of Welsh history

How much more satisfactory than a ponderous debate with the Authorities as to how and with whose money the restitution should be made! It is evocative of the original creation of the memorial, by a young Welsh Nationalist student at Aberystwyth University in the 1960s.  It is a less known fact that that original young artist was one Meic Stevens, who died recently, having risen to the heights of Professor of Welsh Writing in English at The University of Glamorgan, a prolific author and Editor of The New Companion to Welsh Literature!

Meic’s artwork was prompted by the flooding of the village of Capel Celyn to create the Tryweryn Reservoir in 1965.  I can think of no better aide-memoir than a little snippet of British Film Institute video  which records the last event at Capel Curig School and the last wedding, in 1963 at its chapel, while the earthmovers create a great scar in the background. Everyone in their best clothes, the ladies in their hats and heels, little girls  in their summer dresses, boys in in their blazers and ties.  It evokes a distant past.

As the years passed the wall crumbled at one end, and the H disappeared entirely.  One could still draw in and post a letter there, though that opportunity has gone today.

An earlier morph of the graffiti

It was touched up from time to time but it is in the present century that there have been successive attacks on the roadside memorial.  In 2010 it was partially painted over to display an blobby ambiguous tag.  In 2013 MP Mark Williams posed in front if it wearing an expression of grim concern.  The perpetrators thought the obliterated letter W and the smiley face an amusing joke.

MP Mark Williams condemned the new graffiti in 2013

 

The wall was repainted in 2013 with the original message.

The next addition was at least more politically relevant  ” Remember Aberfan was appended and this remained for several years.

More recently the lettering was redone, in green rather than the original white, perhaps to emphasize the Welsh colours.Last weekend’s morph was perhaps the least creative.  The new daub seems superfluous – we already have the well known Elvis rock at Eisteddfa Gurig.  A second ‘Elvis’ lacks the historical relevance of the first, which was a corruption of the electioneering notice for Councillor Elis. One wonders exactly what the author of thinking of.

The Cofiwch Dryweryn wall as it appeared on 1 of February 2019, but was promptly obliterated.

The dynamism of the repainting team, slaving by lamplight on a very chilly night is heartening.  Plaid Cymru Westminster Leader and MP for Dwyfor Meirionnydd Liz Saville Roberts has joined the fray with a worthy statement:

‘The Cofiwch Dryweryn Memorial is a symbolic and poignant reminder of why Welsh land; Welsh culture & Welsh communities cannot be allowed to be so drastically undervalued ever again’

Only in Wales could a piece of Banksy artwork be subject to such publicly-funded protection whilst an unrivalled marker of our nation’s political struggle for self-determination is left open to asinine damage.’

‘The Welsh Government must now act, acknowledge the history of the nation it purports to serve and afford this emblem the recognition and protection it rightly deserves.’ 

But is physical protection really the way forward?  The immediate independent action  to repaint the memorial is surely far more dynamic history than is putting up a fence!  Though I suppose a video camera could reveal, to the embarrassment of many,  the full range of activities to which a roadside layby can be put.

 

 

To fell or not to fell?

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by The Curious Scribbler

There is a good deal of consternation around the Council’s decision to fell trees on Cambridge Terrace so I went between the rain showers to investigate this quiet corner of Aberystwyth.  It is not a road but a footpath really, which sets off along the back of the houses on Queen’s Road, just after the dejected former catholic church, and runs along below the bowling greens  as far as the North Road Clinic.  Here the path swerves uphill to approach North Road.

The thirty-three Monterey Cypresses

The specifications sounded alarming:  33 Monterey Cypresses and 5 White  Poplars are for the chop, and I have heard parallels being drawn with the disgraceful sacrifice of street trees which has caused so much anguish in Sheffield.  So I was relieved to find that the 33 Monterey Cypresses are basically just an outgrown hedge.  These are not trees which like being crowded, and which when used as a hedge must be cut meticulously every year because unlike Yew they do not sprout again from old wood.  The hedge has obviously escaped the council’s care many years ago, and the result is spindly misshapen trees, which have very little visual appeal.  I think their loss is justified. Far fewer trees widely spaced could be allowed to reach the same height here but they would be far more shapely.

The poplars form a twiggy skyline when seen from North Road over the rope maze, and I understand at least one resident has objected to their invasive roots affecting his garden.

View from North Road, the poplars reach above the Holm Oaks on Cambridge Terrace.

But when I walked along this pretty path behind Queens Road I was struck by the other planting here.  There are a couple of gnarled and contorted Wych Elms ( Ulmus scabra ‘Camperdownii’) , and some small crab apple trees, but the secluded  character of  this byway is defined by the many substantial Holm oaks on either side.  This evergreen oak is a delightful town tree, most appropriate for a Victorian setting, and I am relieved to see that these will all be retained.   Already the poplars are overshadowing and their branches inter-meshing with the Holm oaks. Irrespective of the root issue, this is just too many trees in a confined space,  so I cannot oppose their loss.

looking north along Cambridge Terrace

In considering the suitability of the Holm Oak I am reminded of the landmark tree outside Plas Antaron which marks the entry to Penparcau.  This is the same tree that stood there in the 1860s and appears in a sketch in one of W.T.R. Powell of Nanteos’ famous scrap books, and records  his and his friends’ drunken return there one evening.  About 15 years ago I remember  that tree surgeons lopped off its  spreading crown, first on the road side one year, and once this re-sprouted, on the other side two years later.  It looked pretty brutal at the time but the crown re- grew to create the handsome bushy tree we see today.

The Holm oak outside Plas Antaron, Penparcau

The Cambridge Terrace Holm Oaks have the same potential, and already screen the houses from  sight from North Road.  They will flourish without the crowded competition and are a well mannered tree well suited to this location. Hedgehogs have been seen on Cambridge Terrace and probably thrive there not just on the insects and earthworms but  on the nutritious fallen acorns from these trees.

If and when the somewhat dreary rope maze is replaced by a more conspicuous or noisy recreational facility there will still be this calm canopy of dark green forming a backdrop to the former second bowling green.

Aberystwyth Campus a lost cause

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by the Curious Scribbler

Graduation is past, the students are gone for the summer, so the Aberystwyth University Estates Department is once again ramping up their programme of landscape destruction.  Last summer saw the disappearance of several important  shrub plantings including the long stretch below the Hugh Owen Library.  We have had plenty of time to savour the results of that.  Brambles and weeds now flourish in the optimistically spread  bark mulch on the slope, the so-called-wildflower planting has been strimmed down to its brown dead stems, and in the present hot summer, the grass and new turf has, understandably, taken on the appearance of the savannah.  There is a particular irony in the observation that while we ordinary folk stopped mowing our lawns six weeks ago because they weren’t growing, the University’s contractors’ machines have passed repeatedly over the ground during those weeks, kicking up clouds of dust and barely a blade of grass.  That is what happens when you put your lawn mowing out to contract in Shrewsbury.  Specialists contractors cannot be redeployed to do something useful, as in-house staff could have been.  They were employed to mow lawns.

The new appearance of the border below the Hugh Owen Library

The mature plantings of deep rooted shrubs hold up better in the drought.  The welcome shade is enlivened by the diversity of tone and texture.  You could look across a parched lawn to the dense glossy green of holly, cotoneaster, and escallonia, the sculptural leaves of viburnum or choisya, the dusty grey-green mounds of Olearia about to burst into flower, the dark feathers of low growing juniper.

Or you could.  A new outbreak of needless destruction is taking place around the presently unoccupied halls of Cwrt Mawr and Rosser.  As I approached the Cwrt Mawr Hub I was astounded to find the tightly pruned bushy heads of an entire hedge of hollies lying scattered on the ground.  The trees, each with trunks about six inches in diameter, have been sawn off above ground.  It had been a blameless hedge, less than chest high and well tended, and it screened a long plastic bike shelter.

Holly hedge adjoining the path to Cwrt Mawr Hub

Strolling further among the buildings of Cwrt Mawr, things get worse.  Some destruction may have been necessary due to work upon a water main, but the damage is far worse than that.  There is clearly a philosophy here.  Where a border formerly stood, there shall be just one tree, denuded as far as possible of its lower branches. 

Cwrt Mawr

Around Rosser I found more borders had just been destroyed.  The sad mounds of destroyed shrubs lay inn heaps beside the stumps.  Here, not yet wilted, were the boughs of evergreen choisya, olearias about to bloom, azaleas in tight bud with next spring’s blooms, cotoneasters, purple and green leaved berberis. In one border the designated survivor is a Eucalyptus, in another it is a sorbus.  In the furthest border there are no designated survivors.  The penitentary style of the buildings has a new brutality.

Cwrt Mawr.  The  heap on the left is of azalea, pieris and juniper.

Trefloyne A,  –  a great heap of Olearia and Choysia lies around a pollarded tree

This bed was planted with olearias, Choisya ternata and Eucryphia nymansensis

Huge daisy bushes, about to bloom, cut off at the ground

Rosser –   Another harmless border destroyed to enhance the view?

It is no secret that the Estates Department’s decision-makers have no horticultural  or landscape design qualifications.  It is they, and external contractors appointed by them who are wreaking this havoc. How they imagine it will make Rosser and Cwrt Mawr more attractive to students and their parents I have no idea.

It is depressing to write so dismal a piece. I close with another picture taken today, of the cul-de-sac leading to Penbryn 7  Here we see the towering glory of mature olearias cotoneasters and berberis clothing a steep bank, immaculate and maintenance-free.  It is for this sort of quality that Cadw awarded the campus a II* listing twenty-five years ago How long, though, will it survive an administration intent on destroying heritage?

The approach to Penbryn 7, glorious planting interrupted only by the ubiquitous new parking notices.

 

 

Two special journeys on the Vale of Rheidol Railway

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by The Curious Scribbler

I was privileged to travel free on the Vale of Rheidol Railway not once but twice in the month of June.

The first was on a Wedding Special on 2nd June.  Aberystwyth born Claire Lewis married Nick Lee in a charming secular ceremony at Nantyronnen station.  The groom and guests got on the train at Aberystwyth.  We all alighted at Nantyronnen to sit on hay bales, serenaded by a string quartet.  The bride arrived for the ceremony by vintage car and the couple and their guests  re-boarded the train for Devil’s Bridge,  sipping prosecco.  They then made their way to Mrs Johnes’ Garden at Hafod for the reception in a large marquee.

The string quartet awaits the bridal party

The train about to depart after the ceremony

Wedding marquee at Hafod

The railway is spick and span these days, a far cry from its racketty image back in the days of British Rail.  The shining brass work, the uniformed staff, and colourful station gardens make it an outstanding venue.  One or two of the London guests made a rapid bid to change carriages after the odd smut of soot wafted into the open carriage behind the engine, but this all added to the authenticity of the experience.

I had had a small part in the station garden display.  The preceding weekend I helped in the volunteer effort to replant the five great troughs on Nantyronnen Station  with colourful summer bedding, ready for the big day, and every other journey of the summer.

My second free ride came on 11 of June, as guest of the railway itself.  This special journey marked a number of recent milestones: the launch of the first of four carriages which allow disabled access, the restoration of a former weighbridge building at Devil’s Bridge, and the opening, within it, of an information display about the Pine Martin Reintroduction Project led by the Vincent Wildlife Trust. CEO Rob Gambrill, the man behind the railway’s phenomenal success, welcomed us all,  and at every station stop he roamed the platform chatting with guests and railway staff.  A man with a magnificent train set!

Rob Gambrill and railway staff at Aberffrwd station

As I have recorded on this blog, I was (many years ago when British Rail owned the railway) a passenger on the train which derailed spectacularly between Aberffrwd and Nantyronnen in 1986.  It was an early outing of the ill-fated Vista Coach which seated visitors stadium-style facing the view.  Pulled at the rear of the train on the return journey it tipped over on its face, bringing the train to a juddering halt.  It was a pleasing co-incidence to learn from the driver that the immaculately fitted open carriage on which I was travelling was none other than the Vista Coach, now re-designed with traditional seating.  There were no such crises on this journey.

Another reversion was that of our engine, Llewelyn, which until recently burnt oil, but now burns great chunks of anthracite.  The stoker, in true period style, was in contrast to the dapper guard, quite  black with coal dust. Standing at the station we could watch him shovelling coal into the furnace of the engine.  Those motes of soot  tormenting the wedding guests had real Thomas the Tank Engine authenticity.

Exploring Llanrhystud

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This year the Ceredigion Historical Society visited Llanrhystud, on that glorious Saturday when so many were indoors watching Megan and Harry’s nuptials or the FA Cup final.

It is a quiet spot, in which the much-enlarged Victorian church  sits immediately beside the Baptist chapel.  We visited both.  The former is an early work by church architect R.K. Penson and is notable for its stone spire.  Spires are almost unknown in this county but where they do occur they are more usually built of timber and slate.  (There was formerly a tall narrow timber spire on Llandygwydd church, which warped so badly it was taken down in 1913 after just 56 years, the whole church being demolished in 2000). From my childhood I remember recognizing Chesterfield from the train by its warped and twisted spire, malformed as its timbers aged and shrank.  No chance of warping with Llanrhystud’s  chunky construction.

When the rebuild was completed in 1854 the old memorials were swept away.  Most touching of the new ones is the fine white marble wall memorial to Mary Anne wife of John Hughes of Allt-lwyd and daughter of Alban TJ Gwynne of Monachty, who died in childbirth aged just 22 in 1833.  Her child, a daughter lived only eight days beyond her, a reminder of the harsh obstetric hazards of the times.

The group then set off down the coast to visit the lime kilns.  It is hard to imagine the hive of industry at this spot 150 years ago.  The beach at low tide shows the remnants of timber jetties, trackways and stone constructions where the boats came in to unload their cargoes of limestone and coal.  Four massive stone kilns stand just above the beach now largely hidden in a thicket of sloe and may.  We learnt that the different limestones have different uses:  that from the Pembrokeshire  makes good agricultural lime, while that from the Glamorgan coast ( often specified by local architects as Aberthaw Lime) makes a strong cement. Most of the kilns have three corbelled apertures or draw holes, allowing the draught to be adjusted in the light of wind conditions.

The Llanrhystud lime kilns, now overgrown with sloe and may

One of the Llanrhystud lime kilns with draw holes on three sides

remnants of a dry stone harbour on the beach below the Llanrhystud lime kilns

Our final visit was to Felin Ganol watermill not far from the ford across the Wyre.  In the early 20th Century this was still a hive of industry, the waterpower  driving millstones to grind locally-produced corn, and also generating electricity and driving carpenters’ machinery in the loft.  By the 1970s it was sold to new owners who preserved the historic interior and planted a fine Ginkgo in the formerly utilitarian back garden.  It fell to enthusiasts Andrew and Anne Parry, who arrived 12 years ago to actually get it working once more.

The restored leat now fills the millpond above the house, and at the tug of a lever we watched the wheel creak, grumble and slowly come to life.  Then a gentle steady chugging sound fills the buildings as we watched the great cogged wheels transfer the energy to the two spindles which drive two pairs of millstones, and to the sieve which separates the grindings into white flour, semolina ( a coarser grind) and bran.

Felin Ganol, the waterwheel starts to turn.

Felin Ganol, the mill pond supplies the head of water to run the mill for several hours

The products of milling have paid for the restoration, and Anne, whose background at IBERS explains her thorough knowledge of grain, has sourced heritage strains of wheat oats and rye varieties to mill.   I came away with a kilo bag of semolina flour, a fine grain which feels like very soft sand between the fingers.  At £2.50 its not cheap, but it brought a nutty flavour to my homemade quiche and made me realize how anodyne plain white steel-milled flour is as an ingredient.

Felin Ganol, the loft beside the mill pond houses carpentry benches and a rat proof grain store

Penglais Campus – the new Vision?

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by the Curious Scribbler,

The second great loss to campus biodiversity last autumn was the grubbing out of a long shrub border which ran from Student Welcome Centre to the Llandinam building.  Three trees: two Phillyreas and a Griselinia were spared,but the rest of the hydrangeas, olearias, escallonias and fuchsias were scraped away leaving the sea of mud.  The scene was recorded in November see http://www.letterfromaberystwyth.co.uk/penglais-campus-the-destruction-continues/

The justification allegedly was Health and Safety –  the installation of railings at the top of the drop at the back of the border, a drop which at the Llandinam end was a mere 18 inches, but at the the other end about twelve feet.

New turf replaces the mixed borders on Aberystwyth Campus

 

Last week I revisited to see the completed works.  The border has now been replaced by a stunningly green sward of new turf.   This green desert monoculture looks a bit unexpected doesn’t it?  Gardeners know that this bright green turf will soon lose its lustre in the shade of evergreen trees.   Ecologists know that while a species-diverse grassy meadow is an asset, new uniform turf is little more desirable than astroturf. The tragedy is that this expensive form of re-instatement  is only the briefest of fixes, a decision which would only have been taken (and was) by Estates Department staff totally unqualified and unversed in horticulture.  The fear is that, chagrined at the consequences, those same decision-makers will then cut down the remaining trees to save the new grass!

A student petition was sent to the Estates Department in November.  In part the letter read

“large patches of green space and hedges have been cleared and replaced with either woodchip or grass…. this poses large uncertainties with regard to the future of biodiversity on campus and our cherished EcoCampus Gold Award.  .. As students we are very proud of our campus and want to work with the University to make it an even greener space…”

I don’t believe this was the kind of greening that they had in mind.

As for their health and safety, the new railings are just two horizontal rails, of the sort that many a drunk student has vaulted over for fun.  Where the drop was protected by a hedge of shrubs it was far less accessible.  The foreground view through to the IBERS building is now just a mish-mash of different generations of fence, and a paved path  to nowhere.

Looking through to the IBERS green roof, we now see a forest of railings and a path going nowhere

At the same time a new self-congratulatory PR poster aimed at students has appeared in University buildings.

The students may have asked ‘more plants’ but they are not getting them – unless we count the individual seedlings of grass!  They aren’t getting ‘more greenery’ either.

Did the students  specifically ask for hanging baskets?  ( the ones who signed the petition I saw certainly did not). And did they ask for them to be spread randomly around the grounds?  Playing spot-the-hanging-bracket might become a new student activity.  A lone bracket has been affixed to the elegant timber facade of the IBERS building.  Another sticks out adjoining the steps to the Arts Centre and Students Union.  Yet another is screwed high on the wall at the entrance to Geography and Earth Sciences.

An odd location for a lone hanging basket

While a hanging basket gives a quick fix to a suburban patio a large landscape need a far more considered approach and on a practical level, watering these floral displays is going to be quite a challenge.  We have seen other phases of expensive and impractical gimmickry come and go.  The IBERS green wall, for example, has been quite rightly cleared away, for it soon looked like an abandoned garden-centre sales area on end!

The new IBERS building on the campus sported, until 2017 a most deplorable ‘green wall’

One of the current public enthusiasms,  quite rightly, is Bee Friendly Landscapes, I believe that Aber students have already formed a bee-friendly group.  Woodchip, monocultures of turf and the occasional hanging basket are not bee-friendly.  That extensive  bank of flowering cotoneasters below the Hugh Owen Building most certainly was!

There is no landscape expertise guiding the recent changes on campus.  Buildings Maintenance, Health and Safety, Disability Access, Controlled Parking and other pressures all chip away at the carefully designed plantings which earned Aberystwyth University its Cadw Grade II* listing.  Soon there may be very little left to justify that accolade.

First Swallow

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By The Curious Scribbler

Two hours ago the Met office tweeted ( appropriately since bird life was their topic!) “Cold conditions have so far delayed the return of most swallows from Africa. With the prospect of a southerly flow this weekend, many people will see their first swallow of Spring.”

https://twitter.com/metoffice/status/984385642925707265?s=03

Ceredigion swallows however are back already.  My first arrived on Monday and sat on the electricity wire chirruping occasionally and waiting for its mate. By Wednesday  morning there was a pair, chittering away excitedly, and they are now checking the flight paths to their traditional home above the back door.  When I looked out this morning there was a squirrel dangling precariously upsidedown from a hawthorn twig, gobbling down  may buds.  The swallows took a dim view, and bombed it until it retreated into the crown of the tree.

The Met Office tweet stimulated responses – swallows have also been seen earlier in the week  by tweeters in Dorset, Devon, Doncaster, and Moray, East Scotland. My neighbour over the hill has also got his swallows, though usually, he says, they arrive on 22 April, his birthday.

So perhaps the swallows know best and are less intimidated by our chilly spring than we are.  Just a month ago the uplands were frozen,  road access from the east impassable for several days.

The lake at Nant-yr-arian, 3 March 2018

The A44 ten miles from Aberystwyth

But now the magnolias are in bloom, blackthorn buds bursting and the swallows are returned.  Things are looking up.

Diggers and despair on the Penglais Campus

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by the Curious Scribbler.

The diggers are out again.  You will find them at the corner of Penglais Hill and Waun Fawr where tall pines and dense undergrowth filled the corner space which screens Cwrt Mawr from the road.  They are having a lovely time.

Ground clearance by JCB

Trees, some fallen and others not, have been removed

It seems that the objective is to create a clear view through the boles of the pines to the Student Village opposite.  And of course to enhance the non stop drone of vehicles climbing the hill.

The road skirting Cwrt Mawr on the campus

A vast area of churned mud has been created, with heavy machinery compacting and scraping away at the waterlogged soil covering the shallow roots of the big pines.  The pines are important as  home to a rookery, and the undergrowth which was formerly a haven for various wildlife is all scraped up into piles beneath the trees.

Topsoil scraped up amongst the trees

A sea of mud

The view from the layby on Penglais Hill

Thus a woodland understorey has been destroyed, and we must assume will be followed by a sprinkling of the only herbage favoured by the present administration – a monoculture of grass.

Now there are those who like things ‘tidy’.  And in their brick bungalow with a tarred parking space and a  sheet of mown grass there are many exemplars of this style of gardening in Ceredigion.  That is a personal choice. But Aberystwyth University is not a three-bed bungalow, and its denizens include leading ecologists, foresters, plant scientists, ornithologists, mammologists, entomologists, social geographers.  Many of them care deeply about the campus.  Back in earlier times the appearance of the campus reflected the commitment of its many and highly respected academics.  Believe it or not Penglais Campus featured in 1980 in Arthur Hellyer’s book Gardens of Genius  as an exemplar of coastal gardening, alongside Tresco and Inverewe!  Many influential names are still remembered,  Professors Lily Newton, Professor P.F. Wareing, Curator Basil Fox (formerly of the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh), head gardeners John Corfield and Joy Harris.

Today’s academics are no less enthusiastic about the campus and it was encouraging to learn in November that several representatives from IBERS and from the Welsh Historic Gardens Trust had been co-opted onto a new advisory committee which would oversee a new Conservation Management Plan for the campus.

Unfortunately I understand that commenting on current work such as this does not fall within the remit of this committee, the work is viewed by the University as “maintenance”.  There have been a series of such scorched-earth maintenance activities in the last few months.  Today I also revisited the vast cleared bank below the Hugh Owen Building.  Here roots and and stones project from an unmow-able re-seeded slope, and nearer the path is the scruffy tangle of the last years’ wildflower planting, in which plantain and ox eye daisy now predominate.

The re-seeded bank, and ‘wildflower planting’  below the Hugh Owen library

Nearer the entrance the new laid turf is yellowing as a result the incautious administration of weedkiller to the bark mulch adjoining it.

Below the Hugh Owen building.. new turf killed by weedkiller directed at the adjoining bark mulch

It is important to recollect what we have lost, and to hastily rediscover the expertise to create a low maintenance beautiful garden on a slope.  As the Estates Department is already discovering, the new look is far from pristine, and will get a lot worse before, if ever, it gets better.

The Hugh Owen building in its majestic setting in 2003

The new look created in October 2017 is proving hard to maintain, even under grass and bark.

 

Plaiting Polytrichum or stacking logs

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by The Curious Scribbler

The quest for the perfect Christmas tree took me south this year, to a secluded valley between Talgarreg and Pontsian to  select my tree on the root.  Here we roamed the field and eventually chose a beautifully columnar dense-foliaged fir, which has fulfilled its promise, barely dropping a needle during nineteen days indoors without water.  This is the promise of a fir rather than a Norway spruce, but when the trees have been cut some weeks earlier even an expensive fir can be disappointing.

The trees were growing on a north-facing valley side, surrounded by a particularly thick carpet of Polytrichum commune, the Common Hair Moss.  This is the deep cushiony moss which is not sphagnum.  It is a stiffer drier moss which does not hold copious amounts of water and would be of no use for wound dressing ( think First World War!) or hanging baskets.  Its long stems are thin and wiry, as much as 14 inches long, brown at the base, and green with narrow leaves at the upper end.  Its medieval uses included stuffing mattresses or making twine and woven baskets.

Strands of Polytricum commune

I set about the latter task with the handful I had brought home and found that it plaited into a long and serviceable string.  So pleased was I with the result that this year the mistletoe has been tied up with my hairy polytrichum twine  rather than the usual ribbon or string.

Polytrichum twine hangs up my mistletoe

There is the potential for a home industry here.  Cleverer hands than mine could make all sorts of woven novelties with this free raw material. And there are many people with artistic and craft skills in this county.

Another outstanding ornamental use of natural resources may be seen by anyone who pauses and looks right on the Llanilar to Trawgoed road. Gary Taylor has given full reign to his creativity in building his woodpiles.  Personally I have always felt pretty satisfied when my woodpile is just neatly stacked with all the cut ends facing outwards, but here is a man whose woodpile is inlaid with the Tree of Life!  His other woodpile sports a Welsh dragon.  Each outline is traced in stained split logs, set in the face of the traditional stack.

The Tree of Life at Llidiardau. Log pile 2017, Lolly Stalbow and Gary Taylor

Welsh Dragon

Will he have the heart to demolish these huge artworks to heat the hearth?  I suspect this may be a wrench.  But knowing Gary and his immaculate large garden, he probably has another everyday log pile round the back!

And for those who don’t know their mosses: two pictures are below:

Sphagnum Moss

Polytrichum commune

A bit like those pairs of photos they publish in Private Eye?