Fawzia Rahman, who took this picture, calls them ‘vegetarian snakes.’ I think they are more like the sinuous natural curves that inspired art nouveau.
Fawzia, a guest on Randy Hale’s painting course, took this picture on her afternoon walk along the millstream and riverside yesterday. The sinuous ‘snakes’ are, in fact, decayed tentacles of ivy snaking over logs from a dead fig tree which our gardener Flavio Terenzoni recently and reluctantly chopped down. It was sad to do so: the tree, which overhung the millstream and stretched into the walled garden, provided delicious fruit in season . There is nothing finer than a fresh ripe fig plucked straight from the tree. We shall plant more fig trees this autumn, although we will have to wait some time to enjoy their fruits.
