It's been a wet winter. Moss is sprouting everywhere. I was photographing this wall, when some old fellow (possibly literally a fellow, it being Oxford) came up to me and said "You've clearly never been to Devon," in response to my delight at this mossy, decaying wall.
I grew up in Devon and Dorset, where there are still pockets of temperate rainforest. In autumn, there were mists, sometimes for weeks. In spring, rain fell like a waterfall. Rhododendrons rambled out of the old estates and coloised the acid bogs, alongside the blackthorn and myrtle. The weather seeped up from the sea and ran back to join it. The air would smell sometimes of seaweed, a tang in the air. I loved living by the sea. Yet I moved back to Oxford, the most landlocked of British cities. It's still wet, though, and wet means green:
This building has been empty for a while. Already the green is back to claim it. The wire put on the roof to discourage pigeons has been breached, and the moss is building. The boards put on the frontage to discourage squatters stand firm, but around them, grass is growing. Up on the roof, lights in an upstairs room suggest occupation, if only by a trickle of utilities to stave off the black mould. Above a bathroom fan outlet, a fern garden has grown, anchored in the moss choking the gutter.
The print on the boards on the frontage pick up the green that is engulfing the building. Impotent pigeon spikes are belied with passionate cooing from every nook and crevice. The birds and the plants don't take long to take back their space.
And out the front, a new grassy sward is growing in the crevices of this artificial cliff:
I grew up in Devon and Dorset, where there are still pockets of temperate rainforest. In autumn, there were mists, sometimes for weeks. In spring, rain fell like a waterfall. Rhododendrons rambled out of the old estates and coloised the acid bogs, alongside the blackthorn and myrtle. The weather seeped up from the sea and ran back to join it. The air would smell sometimes of seaweed, a tang in the air. I loved living by the sea. Yet I moved back to Oxford, the most landlocked of British cities. It's still wet, though, and wet means green:
This building has been empty for a while. Already the green is back to claim it. The wire put on the roof to discourage pigeons has been breached, and the moss is building. The boards put on the frontage to discourage squatters stand firm, but around them, grass is growing. Up on the roof, lights in an upstairs room suggest occupation, if only by a trickle of utilities to stave off the black mould. Above a bathroom fan outlet, a fern garden has grown, anchored in the moss choking the gutter.
The print on the boards on the frontage pick up the green that is engulfing the building. Impotent pigeon spikes are belied with passionate cooing from every nook and crevice. The birds and the plants don't take long to take back their space.
And out the front, a new grassy sward is growing in the crevices of this artificial cliff:
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