The view from here

Sketchbooks, 2014-1017

Daler Rowney Cachet

Fabriano Venezia

Moleskine: Planner, Watercolor

Pentallic Nature Sketch (spiral)

Stillman & Birn: Alpha, Beta (spiral)

Strathmore: Visual Journal (spiral), Toned Tan (spiral), Mixed Media (500 series)



Rogation Days

From Steve Roud's The English Year, p. 176-177:

Rogationtide is the Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday immediately preceding Ascension Day, the 40th day after Easter Sunday.....It was traditionally the time for the faithful to go in procession around the parish, led by the clergy, carrying crosses and banners, giving thanks to God, and blessing the fields, crops, and animals. This three-day festival was inaugurated in Gaul, in the late fifth century, ostensibly as a direct response to a period of earthquakes, crop failures, and other disasters, and from there it spread to Rome and on to other parts of the Christian world. It was introduced to the English Church in 747 [A.D.], and came to be known as Rogation, from the Latin rogare, 'to ask or beseech'.
The division of the country into parishes also took place about this time, and although it is not clear when it happened, the procession to bless the fields came to include the notion of checking the parish boundaries, and what is now called 'beating the bounds' was born....

Ascension Day will be Thursday, May 25, this year. This blog continues to take its name from the annual practice of walking the parish boundaries, in the days just prior to it.