Thursday, July 26, 2007

Back

Ugh my back is still giving me problems. Well more precisely I've got a pain over my ribs on my bad side. Yesterday it was quite scary as it is easy to break/pop a rib after having had radiotherapy, as they become much more brittle, so I wasn't sure what the pain was. I put up with it all day until the evening when it was really getting me down and I went to bed. Anyway some rest and ibuprofen has reduced it to a niggle, so I suspect it is muscular and maybe coming from my back. I've done some gentle stretches, which I've been neglecting to do recently, and that has helped a little. I just hate having to slow down as it feels like such a waste of time.

But there was a silver lining to going to bed early as I read Wildwood by Roger Deakin, which the lovely Amazon delivered to my door yesterday on the strength of my gift voucher from the Shameless competition.

Anyway the book itself is a thing of beauty, it's in hardback and has a lovely, almost 1930s, tree motif on the cover and there is so much more of it than the abridged radio version.

I'm torn between rattling through it from start to finish or dipping in to bits I fancy, it's a bit like having a two layered box of chocolates.

I'm reading his piece on moths, and they are just such fantastic creatures, and the common English names for our native species are wonderful, in fact there must be a poem in them,eg -: willow beauty, the dingy footman, the clouded silver, the flame shoulder, the smoky angle shades, the dew moth, the privet hawk moth, the green carpet,the iron prominent, the uncertain (my personal favourite) and last but not least the anomalous (my second favourite).

You can tell I'm in love, and Deakin mentions a friend in the Dordogne finding moths all over her white-washed walls on a summer evening as though they were a collection of brooches. What a great picture that conjures up!

The Greek for moth is psyche, the same word as for the soul.

I found this site: ukmoths.org.uk

Look at this emperor moth, it's just stunning.

8 Comments:

Blogger f:lux said...

Ooh, my sympathies re: your back! I once had a knot behind one of my shoulder blades and at first, because the pain shot through me from back to front (like I imagined it would feel to be shot by an arrow) I thought I was having a heart attack...

Anyway, here are some other trees for you to look at?
http://www.lensculture.com/guy.html#

Take care and have a good, relaxing weekend! Lx

3:14 pm  
Blogger apprentice said...

Thank f:lux. Love the trees, she must be doing double exposures on film,or maybe layering in PS?

I'd say nore about Deakin's iew of our connection to trees, but I'm in danger of becoming a Deakin bore.

3:28 pm  
Blogger Pat said...

The other side of the story: my D i L has - on a recent visit - been bemoaning the fact that her larder was infested with moths. I didn't realise they attacked food. However the way you write about them has seduced me and I shall look at them differently now. Just don't eat my mink:)
I know it's a bore but do try not to overdo it physically.xox

9:42 am  
Blogger apprentice said...

Yes they are horrid in the home, but there's only a few that do that. I had to research it for a piece I was wriring, often they come in via birds nest falling down the roof with grubs in them.

I'm feeling better. Pain on that side is paralysingly scaring, but it is easing off, so hopefully it was a muscle pull, plus I've put on my lymphoedma sleeve.

12:14 pm  
Blogger Lucy said...

I do hope your pain is easing now.
My sister brought me 'Wildwood', I missed it on the radio, but it looks delicious.
Moth names are even better than butterfly ones, and their caterpillars are fascinating too.
Actually, there are beautiful moth pictures over at marja-leena's, she's at http://www.marja-leena-rathje.info/main.php
Your landscapes are great.

4:01 pm  
Blogger apprentice said...

Thanks Lucy, they are nice shots. I yearn for a really good macro lens with a circular flash, only about 500 quids worth lol!

5:39 pm  
Blogger Jan said...

Hope you are feeling much better now.
Have another few early nights.
I sometimes think they rest you in every way: mentally, physically, spiritually.
And yep, I know EXACTLY what you mean, how you feel... when you hit on a really special book...
you just don't want to let it go, you crave to stay in its world for ever...

11:43 am  
Blogger Kay Cooke said...

I am about to put my order into Amazon too - exciting!
Congratulations on the photo' success!!!!

3:02 am  

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