This evening at 8:30. Why is it always lighter on the ‘inside’ of the rainbow? the answer may be in here but I’ve yet to read it all; as this is a post it in the moment sort of post, you will have to work it out for yourselves.
One of my favourite painters, Joseph Wright of Derby, I have written about him before, must have been a bit quick with the brush, seeing as he didn’t have a digital camera in 1794
Last nights ‘red at night shepherds delight’ sort of sunset worth waiting for, I walked up to the top of the ridge, visibility was so clear I could even make out the tower blocks of the town best referred to as the ‘hole in the ground town’ a town who’s only redeeming feature is a truly beautiful Victorian railway viaduct, other than that it is best viewed from a distance and bathed in a flattering light of a summer sunset.
As a bonus whilst taking this shot, I watched a badger (it was huge, the largest I have ever seen, dead or alive) trotting along a track and disappearing into the undergrowth. Now I know badgers are not popular with farmers in many areas, because of their part in the spread of TB in cattle, and in parts of the country their numbers are at an all time high;but around here you are more likely to see them as bloated ‘road kill’ than going about their business, so it was a treat.
Badger don’t seem very bright at crossing the road, unfortunately they are creatures of habit, using the same tracks and set’s year after year, they don’t seem to get the concept of ‘not crossing on a bend’ ( I know they were around long before the automobile, they have every right) A few months ago, I came across what at first I thought was a car accident, it was dark and on the road to ‘nowhere’ when I saw a car stopped in the middle of the road and what looked like a body in lying in the road and people crouched down next to the ‘body.’ Brandishing my girl guide first aid certificate, I offered my assistance, fortunately the body, turned out to be a badger (but not fortunately for the badger, obviously) the badger was in my humble opinion about 98% dead, the people with it were, I’m pleased to say 100% alive; I pointed out that to be on a bend on an unlit road on a dark winters night was not a good place to be, unless you wanted to end up like the badger, they said they couldn’t leave it, so I suggested they move it, at this point I could see it was all a bit of a lost cause, I took my leave and left them debating what to do; I don’t know how they got on, I hope the remaining 2% badger wasn’t the biting bit.
On the subject of road kill, whilst in the Lakes the other week I thought I had found the perfect addition to my skull collection when I found a fox skeleton complete with bushy tail, at the side of the road, poking at it with my boot I found that it still had its black nose (that skin must be a bit tougher than the rest) and that the skull was ere, um, how shall we say, a little too ‘active’ and smelly for me to get away with bringing it home in the car, shame, it had a fine set of teeth.
The pressure is on, so much to do, so little time to do it, so only few words, just look and see.
The path ahead, taken from underneath a splendid oak tree, I would have hugged it if I could, but it was way to big, so instead I sat underneath it for a while.
Wild garlic, broadleaf woodland
Wild garlic, detail
Hawthorne blossom, it is exceptional this year,
it looks like snow in may.
The tail end of the primroses
Stepping stones
Bridge
Post box
Back door, multi-purpose boots.
The End
on the Kinder plateau; Joe, Tom and I were joined by a friend and her son ‘the young man’ who is only five.
The forecast was for ‘isolated showers’. I think the showers decided they needed ‘to get out more’ and had found each other on some sort of Internet ‘metrological forum’ and decide to meet up for the day, on Kinder Scout: we were on the hills for five hours, it rained persistently for four of them!
It was my plan to show you lots of arty shots of cotton grass planting, but it was just too wet for anything more than a couple of grab shots, and they are of poor quality, sorry; but on with the story
Kinder Scout, is important both historically and environmentally, in 1932 it was the location for a protest march, that paved the way for the public rights to access to areas of open country; a report from the Manchester Guardian newspaper, dated April 24th 1932
‘Four or five hundred ramblers, mostly from Manchester, trespassed in mass on Kinder Scout to-day. They fought a brief but vigorous hand-to-hand struggle with a number of keepers specially enrolled for the occasion. This they won with ease, and then marched to Ashop Head, where they held a meeting before returning in triumph to Hayfield. Their triumph was short-lived, for there the police met them, halted them, combed their ranks for suspects, and detained five men. Another man had been detained earlier in the day.’
Environmentally, the area has taken a hammering
‘As the environmental pressure on the area has grown over the last 200 years – due to a combination of acid rain, major wildfires and past excessive grazing – the peat soil has become so degraded that, instead of reducing carbon in the air, it is actively releasing it back into the atmosphere.’
It is a wild landscape, deep black peat, that shakes like a jelly if you jump up and down on it
The cotton grass planting is a National Trust project, to stabilise the area, despite the weather more volunteers had turned out than expected; many hands make light work, so when we made it up there they had just planted the last plant not 5 mins before. This could have be akin to telling ‘the young man’ on Christmas eve, that Santa was make believe! It was a long walk for one so young, his mum coaxed the National Trust Wardens in to digging a couple of plants back up again, so that he could plant his all important cotton plant.
(Cotton grass on a sunnier day!)
Tom and Joe just had to take the disappointment on their rain drenched chins.
As made our way home the National Trust wardens, who were no doubt glad to get off the hill and out of the rain earlier than expected, bumped past us down the track.
The weather and the planting didn’t turn out quite how we expected but the day was something of an adventure.
Gusty winds the other day must have dislodged this nest, I found it on the ground
It’s a work of art, dainty, only four inches wide and two deep, it’s constructed from a wide selection of materials, lichens, mosses, twigs, we could identify, both cat and the dog hair and it’s lined with feathers
We were impressed by it’s craftsmanship and as Tom commented
‘ And just think, birds haven’t got any hands.’
He has a point, you try building that with no other tool than a beak!
Sadly they will have to start all over again, with better foundations.
That, how it feels at the moment , one task completed and another sweeps into replace it.
I’d get on faster if I stopped procrastinating about the work that needs to be done, that and writing blog posts.
See ya later.
The weather over the last week has alternated between warm and wet, the result is that you can almost hear things growing, spring is gathering pace, it struck me yesterday evening that the stark, silhouetted landscapes I have been photographing and blogging about for the past few months, are disappearing fast under a rising tide of ‘greenness’ I am not sure I know how to do ‘verdant’ or if I do, I’ve forgotten.
This morning it’s rained, heavily, but soft rain if you get my drift, ‘growing rain’ my dad would have called it. Earlier on the dandelions were tight shut, but within half an hour of the sun braking through, the field had come out in a rash of yellow spots.
The field next to ours is more intensively managed, it’s had sheep grazing on it, so there is less length of grass and not a dandelion in sight. But in our field, there is work to be done, but where do you start, one bee so many dandelions..
I must away to to give a little thought, to the Noddy challenge
Got a bit of a fright yesterday, when taking an empty bottle to the recycling tub in porch, something grey and furry, shot, at speed, round the back of the tub, now we have over the years had all sorts of wild and wonderful things brought in through the cat flap (and into the house for that matter, before mad Moss the dog, became kitchen gate keeper refusing ingress or egress to cat or vermin) and I was a bit worried it might be a rat,we know they are out there, so very cautiously peered around the back of the tub to find this little sweetie
So whilst I caught it, Tom got the camera; the rabbit was so grateful to be rescued from the jaws of death,
that it peed all over my fleece, and it also had (for such a sweet looking little thing) very sharp claws (the rabbit not the cat.)
Tom and I released it back into the field, our dilemma being which field, north, south east, west, we had no idea in which direction it’s burrow lay. We settled on west, although on reflection that might have been a mistake, as that is also the direction, as the crow flies, of our neighbours vegetable patch.
The cats have brought us, wildlife as diverse as bats and stoats, I was sort of glad and sad that the stoat was dead, I imagine they aren’t as easy to catch as a young rabbit and they have very sharp teeth, have a read about such a thing here, an excellent blog, as recommended by the Scottish Officer
Have a sublime Saturday.
On the back door step late at night, do toads swallow spiders whole, they must ‘wriggle, jiggle and tickle inside her’ ,or do they chew well before swallowing
if I could have got the rat, that’s holed up behind the cattle trough in the field, into the frame at the same time we could have had a hat trick of popular phobias all in one photograph
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