The best days are Bear Days!

Beardays in Buxton

Celebrating the years that something has been standing stuffed but still growling in a museum may seem a bit odd, but “The Buxton Bear” has been a feature of the Museum since its arrival 30 years ago. 

When Buxton Museum and Art Gallery redesigned its Wonders of the Peak galleries in 2017 there was much debate about “whether the bear should go?”.

not a local bear

After all, this is not a local bear (probably a North American Black Bear, maybe a Brown?). It isn’t an established part of the Collection – it was brought in to give the museum a bear in a cave as an example of the excitements of life in the Peak District a few thousand years ago (although at the time, our bears were probably larger and didn’t growl in trans-Atlantic accents). The Bear, however, is well known, well loved (by some), well loathed (by others) and well dreaded by adults who were growled at when they were (presumably) much younger. The Museum just wouldn’t be the same without The Bear rumbling away in a corner.

So, The Bear stayed.

And this year marks 30 years of growling in a corner of the Gallery. We have been celebrating! 

Over the summer, the Museum staff have been encouraging the Bear into new looks. We have seen a Boating Bear, a Wimbledon Bear, a Holiday bear, a Pride Bear.

Bear Bunting - picnic

The Museum’s regular event artists have also been joining in with assorted Bearday activities. There have been bear masks, bear finger puppets, drawing big bears, making cards of small bears, bear heads. On Sunday just gone we had a Teddy Bear’s Picnic out on the Slopes in front of the Town Hall. Here between sandwiches and running around, we made bear badges and bear bunting. There were crowns for teddy bears (and cuddly zebras and pigs). There were Bearday Cards (sorry, Bear, they all went home with the children who made them!) and a general sense of ursine cheerfulness

Bear with a honey diamond*

So if you are in Buxton, please do drop into the Museum and say hallo to our Bear. She (or he? Not quite sure) is definitely one of the family.

cheerful bear mask!

Our Bear Day events were the last of the BM125 events marking the Museum's 125th Birthday

 and thanks to all all our Bear event participants and to Richard Johnson for the original bear line drawings we used for the badges!

*the bear stole a honey diamond from the snail who owned and guarded it....

From grumblebees to bumblebears

 Past lavender and thyme,

By blue borage we roam,

Following scentways through the air,

Trails to bring lost bumbles home.

"What bee would you bee?" we asked

There were big bees, and small bees. There were humblebees and fumblebees, grumblebees and stumblebees. There were thimblebees (surprisingly large) and even bumblebears – the ferocious bees with the faces of bears who guard a colony from peril.

There were party bees (very bright, with extra glitter) and armybees (well-camouflaged)

Our bees were well pleased with all that they could bee.

As part of Buxton Art Trail, Creeping Toad worked with the Bumblebee Conservation Trust in the Serpentine Community Farm. Over the BAT weekend at the start of July we talked to visitors, invited people to wander and wonder, to enjoy the delightful gardens of the farm, and talk to us about bumbles. There was bumblebee art to examine (ie art inspired by bumblebees, the bees own art is performance related and needs careful watching). There were flowers, cakes, tea and excitements to encounter

The B'bee CT marquee

Slowly, we built a wall of postcards capturing moments from a bumblebee’s world

There were lots of postcards and if your picture has not appeared here – we apologise!

And many thanks to the wodnerful Ruth Evans for the images she let us use - including the strip at the top of this post and the final image below

Echoing the sky

Echoing the sky

words from Whispers in the Grass

an event report

our venue

A couple of weeks ago, a group of cheerfully creative folks gathered in the fields and garden of te Dove Valley Centre in the Staffordshire Moorlands. In the hills around are wild moors, bleak rocky landscapes and the deep mysterious cleft of Lud’s Church. Here in the Upper Dove Valley, however, we settle into a world of the green, the growing and the buzzing and fluttering….This was a day for words, and wandering, and wondering, for drawing, scribbling, sketching and eating picnics and the partaking of cake. It was a day to simply enjoy being there, being here, at the Dove Valley Centre in the Upper Dove Valley

These hills,
Buttress the sky,
Green mounds echo the sky
Draw rain into this deep valley
Its thirst
by Mary King

Whispers in the Grass was a free, public event as part of the Buxton Fringe Festival, supported by Buxton Museum and Art Gallery as part of its BM125 series of events, celebrating the museum’s 125th birthday, and by Borderland Voices (BV) from Leek

And we talked, scribbled, thought, laughed, ate cake and talked some more

A lot of our BV visitors are experienced poets and needed very little to set their thoughts to paper but for others we suggested structures, starting points, inviting people to simply sit and have a go.


A walk into sunshine
A walk into grass
Insects hiding
Milk churns peeping
Flowers creeping
Memories to take home
by Pauline


POET C*
Whispers in the grass
Little rustles through small stems
Wind flowing freely

Performance begun
Wind playing its instruments
Grass whispers softly

poets and artists at work!

PAULINE’S TAKE ON POETRY
I am just a simple soul,
I don’t go in for complicated rigmarole.
To me a poem is something that rhymes
Although it doesn’t have to
At other times
It may just be beautiful, descriptive and uplifting.
A basic education allows for a shifting and drifting into, out of the box,
Unusual thinking, original, maybe crass
Sometimes its better than nice, precise
Taking more informed advice
I enjoy lots of things
Nature especially - yes and whispering grass.
It sounds poetic
And if it’s easy to verse
I will enjoy the experience of thinking it, crafting it, writing it, creating it,
That may not warrant a degree but it’s a first

With thanks to all our Whispering poets!
All photos c/o Borderland Voices and Richard Egan

* sorry! I didn't get a note of your names!

Beneath the surface....issues among tadpoles

Beneath the surface

a tadpole's life is not always a happy one....

latest Telling Toads contributions

Life in a toad pond or a frog pool is not always easy. Even getting there after a winter of deep dreams in a cold rocky hollow is fraught with peril (and if you humans would ike to help, look for a local
Toad Crossing team, or check out Froglife’s “Toads  on Roads” page). As tadpoles grow, in a warm wet summer, a pond may be a good place to be but if there is too muhc sun and too little rain and the water begins to go…..Natterjacks in their rainwater hollows on heaths and dunes aim to grow fast and start hopping soon: their water is supply is precarious. Our amphibians don’t have those magnificent African Bullfrogs Dads who guard their squirming tadpole swarms (they have even been known to make lions back off, more, i suspect, from confusion than from fear) and who will dig channels from a drying puddle of ‘poles into the deeper, if more precarious, waters of a bigger pool. Our amphibians have to sit there and sing for the rain....

And all that is a longer introduction to the next two Telling Toads contributions…..its summer, I hope you get a chance to sit around somewhere enjoying the season…why not put pen to paper, pencil to note or finger to keypad and send us your own toady contribution….don’t know where to start? See the suggestions that are coming in on the Whispers pages. To read more of our Telling Toads pieces simply search this blog for Telling Toads!

Toads 
Susannah Violette
All sizes they bloat their night-bodies.
With their bulimic tongues, belch
their language of tadpole begetting,
of water seeking,
of climbing damp belly
to warty back
and thrusting
whilst asking:
Is this our puddle?
Am I home yet?

999 Tadpoles
Rosemary McLeish
I can't tell you how awful it is in this pond.
It's a heaving, seething, struggling, lumpy
milk pudding of a mud-hole.
I am surrounded by brothers. 
All they do all day is push and shove, making
more room for themselves. I sit tight
in my tiny space ignoring their jostling.
I keep myself small.

Somebody prods us with a stick.
Alarm stirs the pool into a whirling chaos of
brothers fighting to get out.
A lot of casualties.
At least the gruel thins.

Some of the brothers are growing legs.
They're eating the little ones.
But there still isn't room enough and now
they can kick, not just squirm.
They leave me alone, I don't know why,
so I can swim around a little, stretch.
Some great bird swoops down every day,
scoops up a beakful of us -
you can see them kicking as he glugs them down his throat.
He never comes near me.

Now we're all getting bigger, some are taking off,
jumping out of the pond, disappearing into the long grass.
The water in the pond is clearing,
brightening.
I can tell apart the ones with boring brown blotches now,
some long and thin,
some chubby, some tough and mean,
some cheery and silly.
Still fighting from time to time.
Some days I think it must be the weather.

I begged them to stop but they cold-shouldered me,
preferring fights to rational discourse.
I asked why they didn't like me,
but they looked at me as if I'd crawled out from under a stone.
Once in a while they suspend hostilities, all join
together to raise their voices in harmony to greet the dawn.
It gets on my nerves.
I tried to join them but they don't want to hear
my rusty burping voice, say I can't sing their tune.

They've all gone now. Left me behind.
I've got the whole pond to myself..
Nobody croaking, nobody quarrelling.
I can swim from one end to the other
and across from side to side.

At first it was just what I'd wanted.
The space to breathe,
so still and quiet I could think my own thoughts.
As much food as I could eat.
But gradually I began to miss them.
All that pushing and shoving, something happening
all the time.
Now it's just me and the pond and the weather,
it gets very boring. I'm lonely.
Wonder why they all left, why nobody ate me.
Wonder what's the matter with me.

The duckweed has been cleared,
so when the sun came out I saw myself reflected,
long and deep in the still water.
I looked over my shoulder,
nobody there but me.
No wonder they left me alone.
What a freak!
Yellow speckles, exopthalmic eyes, warty chin.
I should find a large broad leaf
to squat under.

I'm a toad, not a frog! 
But those are diamonds in my eyes.

Originally published in Artesian magazine in 2002, reprinted with poet’s permission

the perils of the deep

Thank you to today's poets, Susannah and Rosie and to Shaun Waters for the rising newt

Voices from a field

our solar system

 Rock-weigher, field-ruler

words from the Whispers 

"Whispers in the Grass"

9th July 2019

We started on a day that promised brightness and threatened rain, cooler than some this summerthe high dales of the Staffordshire Moorlands. This was a day for words, and wandering, and wondering, for drawing, scribbling, sketching and eating picnics and the partaking of cake. It was a day to simply enjoy being there, being here, in Dove Valley Centre in the Upper Dove ValleyWe started on a day that promised brightness and threatened rain, cooler than some this summer in  at the Dove Valley Centre in the Upper Dove Valley

Whispers in the Grass was a free, public event as part of the Buxton Fringe Festival, supported by Buxton Museum and Art Gallery as part of its BM125 series of events, celebrating the museum’s 125th birthday, and by Borderland Voices (BV) from Leek

And we talked, scribbled, thought, laughed, ate cake and talked some more

A lot of our BV visitors are experienced poets and needed very little to set their thoughts to paper but for others we suggested structures, starting points, inviting people to simply sit and have a go.

Haiku, by Mary King (BV)
1. Pink petals,
Drifting to earth,
Childhood gone.

2. Solid five bar gate,
Courage will open it up,
A haze of flowers.


Have a go yourself?
A quick haiku activity: go outside and sit down on the ground if you can. There, a) look at the sky above, b) touch the ground below, c) reflect on how these sensations make you feel. Turn those three thoughts into 3 lines. You mght use the syllable convention ( 5 syllables, 7 then 5 again) but you don’t have to! Go for short, clear images and hold onto room to breathe….(Looking up, reaching down are a good pair of sensations, you coud use others!)

Or maybe you fancy wrapping your vocabulary around a Kenning or two: sometimes riddles, sometimes praise-poems, sometimes just word-ripples of humour and imagery….These stem from Anglo-saxon tales and explore a person, object or even an idea through slightly sidelong descriptions

KENNINGS (answers at the foot of the page)
Rock-weigher,
Field-ruler,
Bone-layer,
Stone-shepherd

Vole-taker,
Cry-maker,
Dawn-waker,
Sky-straker

Soil-turner
Slow-learner,
Harvest-earner,
Each spring, returner
There are more to follow but I hope these leaves from our word-tree have entertained and that you will join us for some more whispers from the grass soon!


Thanks to all our visitors on the Whispers in the Grass day and thank you for your generosity in letting us post your words in blogs like this!

Kenning answers: Drystone waller, Buzzard, Plough

Bumblebees on the Buxton Art Trail

Bumblebee Art

 2 days of art and bumblebees

Serpentine Community Farm, Buxton

6, 7 July

What bumble would you bee? 

A humblebee? a grumblebee? a fumblebee? 

Or maybe just a Bumblebee?

For Buxton Art Trail this year, Creeping Toad is working with the Bumblebee Conservation Trust's Pollinating the Peak project to offer a different perspective on our invaluable Bumbles.

We are running 2 days of art, gardens and Bumblebees at the Serpentine Community Farm in Buxton. There will be an exhibition of paintings and pictures, mostly by local artists. There will be a chance to add your own quick pic to our wall of postcards, building a picture of a bumblebee’s world.  You can make your own bumble-badges as well or use the opportunity to talk to people about your garden – what can you do to make a home more bumble-welcome?

Join us at the Farm and enjoy art, gardens and bumble-buzzing conversations!

Position 35 on Buxton Art Trail 

Our Bumblebee Galleries will be open both days from 11am - 4pm. Admission is free  and materials are provided for activities

Paintings in this post are by Ruth Evans whose work will be included in the exhibition this weekend. Ruth's work also features in another garden conservation project: We Are The Ark so why not drop in on that as well for still more ideas about garden, wildlife and wonder?

Photos: an Orkney Bumblebee above...and below a Dovedale Bumble....

Rock Star frog

a new poem for Telling Toads

The Rock Star

Ruthie Starling 

  

Dragon-toed,

rocking mildewed leathers,

he lumbers to the poolside

seeking refreshment.

This is his favourite shady dive.

Rana. Prince of the Pond.

He’s so cool,

has all the hip-hop moves

flexes clawed gauntlets

revs to leap from heron-shadow.

boomerangs to his stony bar-stool

hungry for a piece of the action.

A squint of liquid darkness

apertures his goggling gaze.

Flirt of lacy wings zooms into sharp focus.

Damselfly, beware.

In flash and snap

his tongue will flick you straight to Heaven.

With satisfied shrug

frog slides off into the blue.

Now he is in his element.

First published Fairacre Press in their Maligned Species series in 2016.

Telling Toads is a Creeping Toad initiative inviting people to submit poems, anecodtes and short stories celerbating our amphibians. More details here 

Photos by Jane Millum (first and last pics) and by Daniel Bran Griffin. More of Bran's work can be seen, here