October Birds in the Garden
Above me, tree shakes
Branches full of long-tailed tits
Singing and dancing
As I clear back weeds
Robin inspects my hard work
For her worms and bugs
Pigeon hoists feathers
Dips a toe into bird bath
Then clambers in, ahh!
The rooks yell at me
‘No food yet, birds’, I yell back
‘Not till November!’
Where are my starlings?
Lone bird calls from the chimney
Hoping flock returns
I find feathers today
One for sorrow, two for joy
The magpie’s message
After the summer, give your hair a boost with this set of three scrunchies in gorgeous cotton autumn tones. And with 9mm wide elastic, gentle on your hair as well.
Curl up with this personalised author’s copy of my fantasy fiction book, Whyllmoon. It will also make a great present for any avid reader and features strong female leads.
Join Wilva Cut-Hand and her three friends as they set out on a journey across Whyll to find Starhanda’s Rock at High Merlon.
They need to take astronomical readings to present at the Annual Council Court in Whyllmouth.
From their lives as apprentices at the Offering House in Whyllbow, they will travel to The Foundry at Dundook, then on to the mountains to try and find answers to the strange events happening in their lands, making new friends and encountering danger along the way.
Give your windows or shelves an Autumn theme with a string of my handmade pumpkin linocut re-usable decorations. Original art and in a range of colours!
Just click on the image or the text link to go straight to my Etsy Shop.
Kestrel
Heatwave ends today
Morning rainstorm, break cover
Brown graze of feathers
..
Cattle Egret
(Cattle egret from a distance.)
Intricate weaving
Across a loom of late grass
Egrets thread cow herd
Apricot hair comb
White feather boa, black silks
Fine for a field day
A line of cattle
Punctuated by white birds
Full stop, comma, dash
..
Sparrows
From the hedgerow, flee!
A flock of fast sparrows flaunt
The field’s dry despair
Long-Tailed Tit
Notes ring, raindrop song
Through wet boughs ten long-tailed tits
Sing sweet harmonies
Grey Heron
Three grey herons fly
Grey flags over grey rooftop
Fanfare for new life
..
The Summer Seagulls
This year, two gull chicks
Speckled pebbles on the ground
By factory door
You sent me photos
Each week, while seagulls watched them
Turn to grey goblins
Shrieking banshee birds
Surviving the heat, the dry
To fully fledge and fly
Summer seagulls swoop
Overhead. Their cold cry cuts
Goodbye, goodbye, Bye!
Drawing Parallels
We draw parallels
Emphasising the differences
Between each other
Better than or worse than
Underlining our egos
Draw only one line
With all your heart
Empty of comparison
Then you will be
Unparalleled
Dusk, December 16th 2025
Fae Morgana lifts her veil
O’er the moor and river
And the sunset’s golden crown
Bejewelled with starlings, glitters
Above the western hill
Where the staff was planted
As dusk creeps across the lawn
And blackbirds call and answer
Notes:
The first poem was written as a reminder to myself that, in my creative practices, I need to be true to myself even if it brings in negative criticisms. It occurred to me it can also apply more widely to our humanity and our interactions with others.
Fae Morgana: Fairy Queen of Avalon. Her veil is the mist rising from the local Glastonbury landscape.
The planted staff in the poem refers to the local legend of Joseph of Arimathea and the Glastonbury Thorn.
The sum of this year’s sunshine laid down in the weight of hedges
A luxury of space for art from when the summer was younger
The push-rich jump to the front of the queue for a penny treat
Newly-minted linen and leather bound
Shades throwing shade
White butterflies over a palette of green while the whelk watches
At the end of the garden, listening to the ailing ladies
All aches under endless, faultless blue skies
The hatted salmon lattes, breakfast eaten at the gallery
Inside the sculptures are stopped
The frozen grin of a deer skull
Dead tree
Old wheels unspun
Where did you dance when the summer was younger?
Notes
I wrote this poem in 2025, then mislaid it and then stumbled across it today. The feeling of summer heat seems pertinent this year, with heatwave after heatwave and having to retreat indoors to escape the sun.
Whelk: Marine mollusc with a spiral shell (archaic: a boil)
Welkin:The sky
Red Kite
The river, bridged by
A road and a red kite, marks
The confluence point
Wood Pigeon
Gathering twigs, you
Build a willow tree house in
View from my window
Seagulls
Three seagulls scull by
One calling ‘Stroke!’ as they fly
A blue summer sky
Swallows
Swallows turn sharply
Sizing up the summer fields
Wing spans set square now
Swifts
Above the house, there!
The needle song of swift flight
Threading through the sky
Postcard Art Exhibit Art for a Cause 2026 shop now open!
There is a fantastic selection of original postcards, created by artists all over the world in support of this year’s charity supporting people with Alzheimer’s, including this watercolour of mine.
Click on this link to find out more or purchase a piece of original art for a good cause!
Card Motifs : cake and candles / cacti flower / arrow ! heart / vases and leaf
These handy packs of four handmade greeting cards feature art collages made from paper I’ve hand-printed with a silver or gold coloured abstract effect. I’ve mounted them onto an ivory 225gsm card stock, sustainably made in the Lake District and I’ve signed each card on the back, making each card perfect to pop in a picture frame after use for a bit of instant art. Inside each card is a loose blank inner sheet for your personal messages.
Each Pack supplied with matching envelopes.
Card size: 5 inches x 7 inches.
You can find them in my Etsy shop here.
Card Motifs: bottles and glass / aquarium / butterflies / cake and candles.
This little postcard-sized watercolour I’ve painted, ‘Tree Bathing’ will be on exhibtion and sale for this year’s PAE art for a cause in The Hague, Netherlands. To find out more click here.
I’ve deliberatley used strong tree shadows to give a sense of bright light pouring through the pine trees.
I’ve also recently been working on some watercolour commissions. This one, featuring balloons over the Bristol Suspension Bridge, also has strong reflections and shadows in the river water to give depth to the river gorge.
This little watercolour of reed beds and an Egret, (for sale in my Etsy shop here) doesn’t rely on strong shadows or reflections but does use a graduated colour on the reeds, from light to dark, to suggest denseness and depth at the water line and the water is the same blue tone as the sky.
So my top tips for working with watercolours to create shadows and reflections are:
Work our your main light source direction for your image and keep all your shadows going in the same direction away from it.
If you have a secondary light source from a different direction, do the same for that but make your shadows are lighter and check whether they are cooler or warmer in tone than those from the main light source.
Think about graduating your colour blocks to emphasise the depth or solidity of an object.
Keep skies and water in the same tonal ranges in your painting, water reflects the sky!
