On Sunday afternoon my Dad and I managed to get out for an hour for a wander through Pointer Wood, Clark’s Lot, Burton Well Wood and Lambert’s Meadow. Like the walk that Rob commented on from a recent post, this walk was ‘as much stopping as walking’. Dad was a very patient companion and helped me find likely subjects, then waited whilst I crawled around looking for the right angles.
Part of the reason for heading this way was that I expected to find cowslips. They were flowering, but they were diminutive.
Still, worth seeking out.
What I hadn’t anticipated was the fact that the early purple orchids would be flowering too.
In Pointer Wood a wide gryke on the edge of the limestone pavement was spectacularly full of primroses.
In amongst them my dad spotted this…
…which is a primula seeded from a garden, or a natural variation?
I noticed this tall slim tree a few weeks ago when I visited with baby S.
It seemed to me that it might be a gean, or wild cherry, but at the time the only clue I had was the bark…
I made a mental note to come back and see it flowering to confirm my suspicions. It seems to me that it’s very tall for a cherry, but it is now flowering. In fact behind it there is a second cherry, equally tall, also flowering. Because of their height most of the flowers were high above us…
…but there were some closer to hand…
From Burton Well a tiny stream flows into Lambert’s meadow. Where a bridge crosses the stream it widens slightly into a small pool…
In and around the pool marsh marigolds…
…were flowering…
We spotted several of these emerging from the pool…
Any suggestions as to what it is?
The surface of the pond was busy with pond-skaters, which were tracked by interesting light-rimmed shadows on the pond floor a few inches beneath.
I have a vague idea that this has something to do with the way that water effects light, but I’m afraid that I don’t really grasp the science. I was once gain reminded of the dark blobs and brightly coloured complex boundaries of the standard depiction of the Mandelbrot set. The pond floor was also covered in a criss-cross web of tracks left by a little community of pond snails, which being roughly the same colour as the mud were hard to see and even harder to photograph.
The rest of the meadow was liberally dotted with cuckoo flowers…
…which look small and white even from near by, but have a rather splendid pink pattern on close acquaintance.
On Bottoms Lane, these tall weeds flourish, which I haven’t got round to identifying yet…
The flowers are hardly spectacular; I prefer the downy unopened flower buds…
Finally, in Hagg Wood, one of those scenes in which the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. For once, I’m reasonably happy with the photograph…
The path through the flower strewn woods leading towards the afternoon sun. What this picture doesn’t quite show is that amongst the abundant wood anemones are bluebells, and that some of the white anemones, having more recently opened, are still attractively tinged with pink…