November: Butter in the Buttercups


Today, as part of our November week, a poem from from Butter in the Buttercups, 1980, by Stella Browning.



Winter-Green Palette
(Mix Buttercup Yellow with Winter-green...)


We will mix the colours of our paintbox
Like Woodland days of Summer's rainbow hue,
Just as BUTTERCUP the yellow toadflax
Dies the mellow field with scabious blue

Violets — harebells, yellow St. John's wort
Lie between the seeds of couchgrass green
Where cow parsley's skeleton: her tall foot
Mixes palette to Winter's colour scheme!

These spangled leaves rest now in moss and seam
The yarrow leaf. Deep wood anenome —
The quiet sorrell seed; pink mallow leaf,
In speedwell dwarfed without her bloom and gnome
Of ale-hoof, ground-ivy locks in sheaf
Whispered rise in Spring mix yellow with leaf....

The winter leaves and skeletons were picked by the children for those which remain green throughout the winter

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