Between trees and path and sky on Wenlock Edge
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Dandelion clocks in outer space
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The wood between the trees
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Wired
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This week at Monochrome Madness, Stupidity Hole sets a thought-provoking theme: The Space Between
Photo Challenge
Caught In Time…
The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.
Rabindranath Tagore
This tiny British butterfly is a male Common Blue. It’s about an inch across. And while it might be among our most common UK butterflies, having one pose like this is a rare occurrence. They’re usually pretty skittish, so you only catch a glint, a flitting chink of summer sky, and then they’re gone. This was a chance encounter on a summer’s evening.
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Expectations are like clouds – beautiful from afar, yet vanishing when you reach for them Monika Ajay Kaul
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The light does not stay… Tennessee Williams
There’s that moment as the sun disappears when there’s just enough light to take a photo.
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So passeth, in the passing of the day, of mortall life the leafe, the bud, the flowre
Edmund Spencer
The glory of a Morning Glory is so brief, half a day at most. And you need to be up early to catch the best of it. I’m not sure how long the runner bean flowers last, perhaps a couple of days before they’re fertilised and begin to transform into beans. I must pay more attention next summer.
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mutation of weathers
and seasons,
a windfall composing
the floor it rots into
Seamus Heaney North
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The wind shall blow them none knows whither
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Foolhardy or deeply ironic: a dandelion clock for a timepiece? But then it always was such fun, huffing and puffing, seeing how far those little parachutes would fly. A sure way to annoy a gardener.
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Leaves are the verbs that conjugate the seasons
Gretel Ehrlich The Solace of Open Spaces
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Two seasons on Much Wenlock’s Linden Walk. Watching the leaves come and go through the year is another kind of time-keeping. The quiet sort.
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Lens-Artists: Ephemeral This week Tina sets the theme. Call in to see her thoughtful and inspiring post.
Scavenging The Old Africa Album
This week at Lens-Artists, Anne from Slow Shutter Speed sends us on a virtual scavenger hunt. I haven’t been in the old Africa album for a while, so I thought I’d have a rumage there. A virtual mini safari as well then.
‘Wavy lines’ tops the list. The header thus features a wavy profile of hippo ears, eyes and noses in a wavy Lake Naivasha in the Kenya Rift Valley.
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This herd of Maasai Mara elephants was in a very peaceable mood. They walked around us as we were parked up eating a picnic breakfast. I’m thinking elephant hide would feel pretty ‘bumpy’ should one ever dare to try it, especially the trunks.
Whereas cheetahs must be wonderfully ‘soft’. They also wear nice ‘circular’ spots. This female was having an afternoon siesta when we pulled up beside her in a safari truck. She didn’t look at us, but simply posed like a professional, well used to having her photo taken.
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And more ‘patterns’. This time stripes. Zebras come with wavy ones:
And then there’s another Kenyan speciality, patterns-wise:
Cotton kanga wraps come in pairs with vivid designs and snappy Swahili slogans on the hems, here worn by Digo girls on Mombasa Beach.
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Now for ‘smooth’ water and a smooth dug-out canoe on Tiwi lagoon. A Digo fisherman under the midday sun. I’m guessing he’s looking for reef lobster.
And as for ‘cool shadows’, here’s me escaping to some at a Tiwi beach bar. Not so much too hot, as too bright to see out on the white coral sand. Aaah! Those were the days.
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Lens-Artists: Virtual Scavenger Hunt This week Anne at Slow Shutter Speed sends us on a photo quest, five to ten of the following: wavy lines, bumpy or soft texture, patterns, things circular, rectangular, smooth, made of glass, something with water in it, with green eyes, a wheel, a camera, cool shadows or jewellery…
Macro Monday: Spotted This Morning
Seven-spot Ladybird on Rudbeckia
In A Certain Light
I was walking in the deep shadows of Much Wenlock’s old railway line when a break in the tree cover provided this moment for a backlit photo: the spread ‘palms’ of Horse Chestnut leaves holding up the sun.
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This section of clear-felled woodland viewed through a row of standing conifers caught my eye on a walk up to Iron Age hillfort, Croft Ambrey, just over the Shropshire border in Herefordshire. It was a bright autumn day, the last day of October in fact.
Here’s the non-sepia version:
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I’m often inclined to take photos in very unpromising light conditions. This next shot, edited in sepia tones, is of the ruined nave of Much Wenlock Priory taken after the sun has just set. I like the slices of remnant light inside the windows and on the corner stonework.
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No people in glasshouses in the next shot, only weeds and general abandonment. It was a chance shot one winter’s afternoon as I was leaving my allotment plot. The glow inside the old greenhouses struck me as unearthly, a bit E.T.-ish. What alien life forms might be sprouting in there as the sunlight strikes them?
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This next structure was caught in full-on spring sunshine.
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Whereas these Pembrokeshire rooks, were snapped as they came home to roost in winter twilight:
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Finally, a sunsetting shot, taken looking out on the Mawddach Estuary. It’s a favourite Farrell spot in the garden of Borthwnog Hall, near Dolgellau, mid Wales
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Monochrome Madness: Backlighting This week at Leanne’s Monochrome Madness, Brian aka Bushboy sets the theme. He wants to see our backlit photos, but for more inspiration, please take a look at his post.
After The Harvest: Of Stubble And Straw
Come August and this year’s harvest has already been and gone. A good month earlier than usual. And somehow we missed it, we who live in the midst of rural Shropshire. In fact, when we drove out of Bishop’s Castle last Saturday, it was quite a shock: wherever you looked the wheat and barley fields lay shorn, the straw baled, or rolled in roundels, the remnant stubble pale and parched. Fields stripped.
How could we have missed so much activity and industry. Did we not hear the combines’ drone?
Along the lanes, too, the hedgerows had that dull and dusty out-grown look of late September. Dock and hogweed gone to seed: russet and deep umber shades of autumn. And again: how could this be? Had we been asleep, Rip-Van-Winkel-like, and lost a chunk of summer? Or had time skipped a month or two?
No. Simply distraction on the home front, gardening and household pursuits. Letting the world pass us by through weeks of day-on-day sun and rainlessness, which of course is the reason why the harvest was so early.
But now it has me reflecting on the beguiling looks of stubble fields, and thus a posting of photos of harvests past, of pared down textures, bare lines and simple colour palette of monocrop farming. I find myself attracted to the spareness of these humanscapes, although wary, too, of the high high-techery that produces such results. This is not the kind of farming I grew up with, the cut wheat stacked in stooks to dry, the arrival of the threshing machine, a monstrous sight over our garden wall, the contraption that, hung in sacking shrouds, throbbed and shuddered, spewing out clouds of chaff as it garnered precious grains from stalks and husks.
Hey-ho. More time slippage.
[The header and final photos were taken mid-September last year above Bishop’s Castle. The in-between shots are from Townsend Meadow, below Wenlock Edge]
Lens-Artists: Lines, colours, patterns Johnbo asks us to explore these tools of photo composition.
Serenity ~ Inside And Out
There are vistas that manifest serenity – at least as seen through human eyes. (I mean who knows what fervid biological imperatives are playing out beneath the calm surfaces of things).
This distant view of the Great Orme from Anglesey was shot on a late December day, the air so still there is barely the hint of a tide. No clouds either, and the sun warm enough to go coatless and believe the seasons have fast-forwarded to June.
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Another ‘still waters’ scene. An end-of-summer sunset in Kalamata. I watch a naked man wade into the rose-tinted shallows of the Messenian Gulf, talking on his cell phone.
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And a third sea-serenity scene: another December, this time long ago, a tropic summer afternoon on the Manda Strait; Lamu, dhow captain Mzee Lali dreams.
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Then there are things that induce a sense of serenity in me. This unruffled cloud for instance…
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The close-up view of hawthorn blossom and the scent of lilac…
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The gentle fragrance of bean flowers and pleasing thoughts of beans to come…
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And the all embracing company of trees…
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…whatever the season…
Lens-Artists: Serenity This week Egidio at Through Brazilian Eyes sets the theme. Please pay him a visit.
Breaking the rules: more by accident than on purpose…
I’m not sure what was going on when I took this photo. An unintended composition, methinks: camera aslant; subject leaving the scene; shooting into the sun. An all round combination of errors, but then I also quite like the end result.
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Here both the camera person and the subject were on the move, in other words, me snatching this shot of an uphill cyclist through the car windscreen; caught on a bend in the Llanberis Pass, North Wales.
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Next at Plas Newydd, Anglesey in late December, taking a photo when there wasn’t enough light and leaving a twig in the way:
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Taken on Newborough Beach back in March: too much negatives space; subject out of focus and also leaving the frame. But then that’s kite-flying for you.
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And camera on the wrong setting for a winter’s day on Seaton Beach, Cornwall. It seems to have created an oil painting effect:
And last but not least of strange creations:
It took me a while to work out what I’d done here. Basically it’s a photo of a frosted spider’s web stretched outside the window of other half’s old Wenlock shed. But you can see both the shed interior and the reflection off the window which seems to show neighbouring rooftops and some of the garden.
Lens-Artists: Break the rules This week Ritva tells us to break the rules. See her post for some inspiration.
Catching The Light And Finding Home
I took the header photo on March 11th, the last rays of sun over Shropshire-out-of-Wales, lighting up the first sprigs of cherry plum blossom. I have only recently identified this tree: Prunus cerasifera nigra – a native species that lives just over the hedge outside our kitchen window. Every day now, and especially when we sit down to eat, we are watching it with special attention. For it seems this tree, which I had started off disliking (for reasons explained below) has become a household treasure, albeit one ‘borrowed’ from the roadside verge next door.
When we planned the kitchen extension (to replace an ageing conservatory attached to our newly bought old house) we did not think too much about the view. The site was tight, constrained by planning regulations, conservation area considerations and an overgrown hedge (although it has been cut back), and so we assumed our new big window would mostly look out on sprawling holly and hawthorn.
But now we find we also have a tree-view. And though I’m not so keen on pink, I cannot deny its loveliness, and especially at sunset. For this was another unplanned aspect: the only possible position for the window meant it faces due west.
Two weeks ago the branches were still black and bare, a skeleton mesh against wintery skies. One week ago, with the sudden sunny spell, if we looked hard, we could spot tiny slivers of pink on breaking buds. This week we have the first blossom, a good two weeks later than last year, when our February 24th view through the landing window looked like this:
So much for all the talk of this spring being sooner and warmer etc etc than other springs. Not so in Bishop’s Castle. After the week of warmish weather, the polar vortex is now rolling out cold, cold air day after day, and the cherry plum’s impulse to flower feels arrested somehow. But then that’s alright. A slow flowering will be just fine.
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Last spring, as the building work progressed we watched the blossom cloud give way to foliage production. Next we had a dense, dark, rustling canopy, the leaves almost black at first sight, and not very pleasing. When viewed from outside, the tree cast a pool of deep gloom over the garden steps which I found depressing. But then come August and the kitchen all but done, we found ourselves sitting down to supper with an unexpected light show.
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Two months on – and another unexpected view – a November snowfall and an abstract work that made me think of Jackson Pollock’s Autumn Rhythm, which I think we once encountered in the New York Met, where we’d gone to escape an unanticipated May heatwave.
And so in our new home, with passing moments, hours, days, and months, (two years in August), we are coming to know our closest neighbour, the cherry plum. Its fruits are said to be edible and good for jam. I managed to discover a single one last year. It was deep red and round, bigger than a cherry, with a firm skin that seemed to scrunch when I bit into it. It had a sweet-and-sour taste that made me think of Chinese plum sauce. Back then I did not know about its eating potential, and anyway I think the tree has grown too tall for elder scrumping forays.
But never mind. It has anyway inspired me to think more kindly about our horrid hedge, and how to deal with some ugly gaps just beyond the window. I’ve discovered cherry plums are good for hedging so I’ve recently planted three white flowered saplings, hoping that (in the not too distant future?) the blossom will cheer both us and passing neighbours. And maybe there’ll be fruit too – for us and the birds.
There are other bonuses of course. When I was out on the far side of the hedge preparing the ground for planting, there was much chatting with locals who wanted to know what I was up to. And indeed, why I’d come to live in Bishop’s Castle, and where was I before. All good questions and a good start too to feeling, after a few unsettled years, that we’ve at last come home.
Lens-Artists: Life’s Changes This week Anne sets us a theme rich in possibility. Interpret it as you may, but first see her post for an inspiring tale of personal development.
Of Right Royal Geometry
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So begins Becky’s month of square format photos – of things geometrical. So here goes.
There’s almost too much geometry in this shot: triangles, rectangles, circles, semi-circles, octagons. It is was taken at Kenilworth Castle in Warwickshire, a medieval fortress transformed in the 1570s into a grand Tudor palace, wrought at huge expense by Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and with the sole purpose of entertaining his queen (and rumoured lover) Elizabeth I.
More of that story here: Greater love had no man…
The photo shows a slice of the pleasure garden and ornamental aviary constructed in 1575, specifically for Elizabeth’s visit. This is how she would have first glimpsed it, descending from the royal apartments to a loggia terrace, whence she could view the whole extravagant horticultural confection. For this particular visit, it is said Elizabeth arrived with thirty-one barons and four hundred staff.
And they stayed nineteen days. (Just imagine!)
Robert Dudley pretty much bankrupted himself to keep them all amused, not only with lavish banquets, but also with hunting, pageants, plays, bear baiting and fireworks.
And after all this, Elizabeth still could not be persuaded to marry him.
As to the garden, it was lost for nearly 400 years. English Heritage have reconstructed it using an eye-witness account of the visit by one Robert Langham plus archaeological and historical investigation.
You can read Langham’s account HERE. He speaks of ‘fair alleys…green by grass…and some (for a change) with sand…pleasant to walk on, as a sea-shore when the water is availed.’ He mentions too (and not an inconsequential attribute in those times) ‘the sweetness of savour on all sides, made so respirant from the redolent plants and fragrant herbs and flowers, in form, colour, and quantity so deliciously variant’.
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And the ruins of the erstwhile royal apartments:
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Wishing everyone an all round happy New Year
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#GeometricJanuary You can join Becky’s square posting every day this month. The only rule is the photo must be in square format. How you interpret ‘geometry’ is up to you.
