garden – A Note On a Rainy Night

Louisiana Art Museum, Denmark

I was tidying up some old photos and found some from my trip to Denmark in 2015 that I never posted. These are of the Louisiana Art Museum. It’s a modern art museum and sculpture park just up the coast from Copenhagen.

Nara Garden

While we were in Nara we also visited a traditional Japanese tea garden. Unfortunately the tea house was shut, and it was raining, but it was still a lovely garden.

Kyoto II

Here’s some more photos of Kyoto. I have split the pictures up into several entries. You can see more photos from Kyoto and other cities in the Japan category, and also read about the trip in the zine I wrote. Kyoto is famous for its cherry blossom, but sadly we were there a couple of weeks earlier than it comes out in full bloom. You did see the odd bud here and there though.

Moss is slow life

Here’s some photos of details of the Zen moss gardens of Kyoto.

Limone sul Garda

Now I’m heading over to Limone sul Garda on the other side of the lake. I didn’t spend much money while I was in Italy, but a hefty chunk of the (tiny) budget went on ferry tickets. Boats constantly criss-cross the lake to all the towns, and it’s the most scenic way to see the area. If you’re in a hurry, you can take the bus on land, but I was on holiday, so by definition, not in a hurry.

Lassay les Châteaux

Last month I went to visit my mum in France. She lives just outside a small town called Lassay les Châteaux. It does indeed have several ruined castles. It’s on the Pays de la Loire / Normandy border, and most of the houses in town are old stone cottages. She considered buying one, but it was too damp. When people are thinking of France being cosmopolitan and chic, they are not thinking of rural Normandy. It’s a lot like Derbyshire, but without the mountains. The local cuisine is heavy on tripe, bacon and sour cream, served with teacups full of cider (there are two rival triperies in another nearby town). While I was there, I mostly ate my own weight in brioche and sour cream, and sat in the sun reading a book about the post-war political history of Europe. I took quite a lot of photos on film, so I’ll wait until I have those developed before writing more.

Ugh. Disgusting.

Here’s a rough mock up of something I’ve been working on. It’s not quite how I want it yet. When I was younger I had a book called Nature All Around (I scanned it in this post) and it had a picture of a big orange slug that used to disgust and fascinate me. A few years ago I lived across the road from a fish and chip shop with a poster in the window advertising the “new masala cod”. The photo was a lurid orange, and looked a lot like a less frilly version of what I’ve drawn. If you bought a masala cod late at night and forgot to eat it, I always imagined it would creep along the carpet in the night and smother you like a terrible 70s horror film.