Postcard 28: Sir Isaac NEWTon at Aberglasney?

Aberglasney, home of the poet, John Dyer
a) Newt in the pond
(we thought we saw an eel or elver, too)
b) Looking for early bluebells
c) Magnolia bursting out

Spring and summer are merging into one, it seems, as the warm sunshine continues in this neck of the Aberglasney woods. It will not be long before the bluebells unfurl their shimmering blue carpet over Pigeon House Wood, home to treecreepers and - of course - pigeons. Gillian Clarke, in her Aberglasney sonnet sequence of 'Nine Green Gardens', referred to the lords-and-ladies in her poem about this part of the garden. The stream is currently lined with what I think is Yellow Skunk Cabbage (Lysichiton americanus), a variety of less-than-sweet-smelling arum lily from the Pacific northwest region.

How many of you remember the tortoise, Mr Alderman Ptolemy and his newt friend, Sie Isaac Newton from 'The Tale of Jeremy Fisher' by Beatrix Potter? Jeremy Fisher invited them to dinner, and since fish was off the menu that evening, he offered them roasted grasshopper and ladybird sauce!

We were delighted to spot a couple of newts in the Aberglasney pond on our most recent visit. We also thought that we saw a small eel. Did you know that we have three native species of newt in the UK? - the Smooth Newt, the Palmate Newt and the Great Crested Newt.

'See her woods, where Echo talks,
Her gardens trim, her terrace walks ...'

John Dyer, The Country Walk

Postcard 6: A ripple on Loch Ness

Summer 2008: Urquhart Castle & Loch Ness.
The only monster I saw was a millipede ...
© Caroline Gill 2008

Monster-spotting on Loch Ness became popular in the 1930s, when Bertram Mills offered a £20,000 reward to anyone who could capture the monster. Virginia Woolf visited the loch in 1938, and commented on the monster with 'no head'. Beatrix Potter wrote about its 'humps' (Times Online). John Buchan penned a lean but evocative description of the king's Lieutenant at Loch Ness in his 1928 biography, Montrose.

Books about the monster abound and Edinburgh boasts its own 3D Noch Ness Experience. You can read or listen to The Loch Ness Monster's Song by Scots Makar, Edwin Morgan; and countless other poets have tried to capture something of this elusive phenomenon. Years before Woolf's visit, the monster was afforded special protection under the 1912 Protection of Animals Act for Scotland.

• Lines On The Fall Of Fyers Near Loch Ness by Robert Burns
  
• Loch Ness by William Topaz McGonagall (1830-1902)
• Nessie the Great Big Monster, a poem for children by Gordon Nicol
• Chapter entitled Lough Ness by Samuel Johnson (scroll down a little)
  
• Bartstewart.com - Logic and the Loch Ness Monster
• The Guardian: A Fanfare for the Scots (Sean O'Brien on Robert Crawford)

Castle Urquhart:

• An overview with photographs (www.shubs.net)
• Urquhart Castle (www.usscots.com) - fascinating references to Columba's biographer and a Pictish brooch.
• More on the brooch (or copper alloy pin)
• William Wallace and Andrew Murray. Wallace, known to many from the film, Braveheart (1995), was a 12th century knight, and the inspiration for The Acts and Deeds of Sir William Wallace, Knight of Elderslie by Harry the Minstrel (aka 'Blind Harry'), who lived in the 15th century.
• Wallace: more than a brave heart by Linda L. Crockett