I’ve watched this crop of rapeseed developing behind our house since the autumn when it was sown – back to back with the wheat harvest. All through the winter it clung to the ground and was much eaten by pigeons. In April, after a good dosing with agrichemicals, it sprang into life like Jack’s beanstalk, and was soon taller than me. By May is was a sea of acid yellow, that mellowed to gold. This morning at 5.30 am it was turned to copper. As I’m writing this, the field, under the full-on midday sun, is being visited by hosts of cabbage white butterflies.
So it is that the plants have survived deluge, bird predation, gale, blizzard, frost, three lots of snow, and now weeks of ground-baking drought. The plants look almost ready to harvest, although when I inspected a couple of pods last night, there seemed to be precious little seed inside. Which made me think that only the farmers who are harvesting sun with their fields of solar panels will be having a good crop this year.
Here’s a retrospective of Townsend Meadow during 2018.
Tish Farrell 
The years photos are a great record, if I did that from my windows it would be very dull 1930’s houses.
The ever changing farm lands. You have captured it well.
Thank you, Beverly.
A field for all seasons, indeed!
Wow! I love all the variations! How do you get the same position?
Those shots are from my upstairs office window 🙂
This is a marvelous collage(?)
I especially like the last two shots.
I need some snow!
Good heavens’. You can’t be serious?
One view, all the seasons- this is a beauty!
Glad you like it, Jennie.
I did! 🙂
Same place, so many seasons. That copper colour is amazing
Nature’s bounty by seasons, nicely captured.
Thank you, Sally.
I loved this set of photos. Great title for them.
Many thanks 🙂
A feast for the eyes and the butterflies, but my eyes pop and ask in surprise, ” Do you usually wake at 5.30am?” No wonder you get so much done with your writing and photography and your garden. 🙂
Oh I don’t stay up if I wake then. Or not often. Just take a few bleary eyed shots, stare a bit at the world, then go back to bed. And oversleep!
I am still impressed that you can focus so well at that hour. 😉
What a wonderful gallery of shots. Your office window offers much nicer vistas than mine 😀
Have to climb on the cabin bed to see it though, which is probably a dodgy thing to do at 5 am when all body parts are not fully functional 🙂
Oh no!! You’re braver than I’d be.
It’s certainly been through the mill, hasn’t it? 🙂 🙂 It almost looks American in its bronzeness in your opening photo. Blowing cooling breezes your way, Tish. Fan you for tuppence?
Done! Will even add a tip. Going outside now to catch them 🙂
The four seasons are very well represented!
Isn’t it fab to have a view like that from your window? I see you even have a similar telephone pole and wires that likes to sneak in on the shots just like mine! We have a few farms of solar panels in Cornwall. I detest them, but you are right, they are the ones who will be reaping the benefit this year! Maybe I should get solar panels fitted to my roof!
We know a Cornish farmer who was struggling before he had solar panels. Now he can graze his sheep under them and they have shelter in bad weather.
I had never thought of that. Sheep huts!
I’ve also seen pics of them used in office car parks. How brilliant is that – multiple car ports.
Ooh, now there’s an idea.
That snow is a distant memory now, but how photogenic it was, especially through the window. Lovely idea taking a photo from the same spot on a regular basis, great record of the seasons
It’s a view I find endlessly interesting and so looked at many times a day. No especially striking features as such, but the false horizon can often throw up some dramatic skies. When the field has been harvested and the soil turned over we sometimes find rusty old horse shoes from the heavy horses that must have once worked it. That’s a nice ghost image to conjure.
I think I would spend a lot of time gazing out and dreaming of days gone by, especially how it would look being worked by teams of draft horses. How old is your house? Would it have been around in those days?
Not sure exactly. Possibly 1830, though much re-built. Possibly a blacksmith’s when our house and next door’s were all one. Or some other working establishment. It’s also possible the original builders were lime burners as there are the remains of lime-kilns up in the woods. We keep meaning to try and find out more.
1830 wow. Houses around here were built in the 1970’s and they are considered out of date and so many of them are being demolished and huge Mac mansions built on the sections leaving no room for gardens
A good part of these pictures could be categorized as abstract art, Tish. You keep learning and growing.
Thank you very much, Shimon. I do appreciate your observations. It’s good to keep learning at my age, though would rather cut down on the growing – at least in the middle regions!