The Verdant Lungs of Old Aberdeen
Posted: Tuesday, 29 July 2008 |
Green Lungs. Every city, no matter how bijou, needs them. Imagine New York without Central Park, or Birkenhead without its eponymous green lung (on which Central Park was based): imagine a London lacking its many green spaces, how unbearable that would be - no Regent's, Hyde, St James'; no WWT Barnes; no Kew (this is not just a park, this is a ...)
This is Victoria Park, Aberdeen, Westburn Road. A road much travelled...
'It is necessary to go
through dark and deeper dark
and not to turn' - Stanley Kunitz.
Farther afield in the Granite City, a hot trudge along the once-quiet Anderson Drive, where gracious living has been bisected and diminished by a dual carriageway; where the odd mini mock-baronial folly rubs shoulders with douce granite semi dormer bungalows; where 'Dunroamin' has a liff-size piper complete with bearskin etched in the glass front door, lies the jewel in the crown of Aberdeen's breathing spaces, Hazlehead Park.
Memorial Garden
Twenty years on.
Rose 'Remember Me'.
tree vista for the arborially deprived
Its's art Jim, but not as we know it...
a peaceful place to sit and look (what a lie, its the school holidays and the place was crawling with bipeds large and small!)
The Three Graces...Granite City style
Ian Hamilton Finlay. Great artist and creator of Little Sparta...alas, fpu was not tall enough to fit it all in...even on tippy toes...
more art-in-the-park...goodness knows, don't ask me, something about a stone bench with...whatever...The Larch is more impressive.
FC's ancestral fountain: sadly, no water.
close-up of FC's ancestor, possibly Aslan...
a Patsy Kline moment...Crazy...
This is an Ent who allowed fpu to sit on his feet for a while, in the shade of his ancient cascading hair...
three studies in green and bronze
'fair hair may hide dark roots' (from The Wee Book of Calvin)
'It is midsummer: the leaves hang big and still:
Behind the eye a star,
Under the silk of the wrist a sea, tell
Time is nowhere.' - Ted Hughes
Peace and Her Dove 1959
'Only Skuld
born of the Future
lifts her eyes: hope
is the lithe curve of her neck.
Wintering will pass:
she will fly
with the tilting earth.' - Christine de Luca.
Exuent, refreshed and not pursued by a bear or any other scary beasts...
'I can scarcely wait till tomorrow
when a new life begins for me,
as it does each day,
as it does each day.' - Stanley Kunitz.
This is Victoria Park, Aberdeen, Westburn Road. A road much travelled...
'It is necessary to go
through dark and deeper dark
and not to turn' - Stanley Kunitz.
Farther afield in the Granite City, a hot trudge along the once-quiet Anderson Drive, where gracious living has been bisected and diminished by a dual carriageway; where the odd mini mock-baronial folly rubs shoulders with douce granite semi dormer bungalows; where 'Dunroamin' has a liff-size piper complete with bearskin etched in the glass front door, lies the jewel in the crown of Aberdeen's breathing spaces, Hazlehead Park.
Memorial Garden
Twenty years on.
Rose 'Remember Me'.
tree vista for the arborially deprived
Its's art Jim, but not as we know it...
a peaceful place to sit and look (what a lie, its the school holidays and the place was crawling with bipeds large and small!)
The Three Graces...Granite City style
Ian Hamilton Finlay. Great artist and creator of Little Sparta...alas, fpu was not tall enough to fit it all in...even on tippy toes...
more art-in-the-park...goodness knows, don't ask me, something about a stone bench with...whatever...The Larch is more impressive.
FC's ancestral fountain: sadly, no water.
close-up of FC's ancestor, possibly Aslan...
a Patsy Kline moment...Crazy...
This is an Ent who allowed fpu to sit on his feet for a while, in the shade of his ancient cascading hair...
three studies in green and bronze
'fair hair may hide dark roots' (from The Wee Book of Calvin)
'It is midsummer: the leaves hang big and still:
Behind the eye a star,
Under the silk of the wrist a sea, tell
Time is nowhere.' - Ted Hughes
Peace and Her Dove 1959
'Only Skuld
born of the Future
lifts her eyes: hope
is the lithe curve of her neck.
Wintering will pass:
she will fly
with the tilting earth.' - Christine de Luca.
Exuent, refreshed and not pursued by a bear or any other scary beasts...
'I can scarcely wait till tomorrow
when a new life begins for me,
as it does each day,
as it does each day.' - Stanley Kunitz.
The diary entries of an averagely intelligent feline and his Marmalade Chum.
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