If I feel like reconnecting with nature I don’t have to go far. Over the road, into the woods and up to the old millpond usually is enough. There was a time a few years ago when this looked like it was drying up entirely, but its lower parts now seem to be developing into a natural swamp, and quite attractively.
It’s time these went into the garden, to be honest, but in the last few days the rain has come down and grubbing around in dirt is less appealing. A few days ago I noted there was not going to be much variety on here for a while, and so it has proven; a sixth post in the last seven from Hebden Bridge, and the third to have been taken in or from the house. You can tell it’s our place because of the grubby windows: and apparently they were cleaned on Monday.
I am days behind with my posts — and Tuesday 26th May was not an exciting one, I spent most of it in the flat in Dundee, trying to work but (as is the case most of the time these days) not exhibiting a great deal of mojo. The picture is one of those ‘what can I see out of the window’ moments. Let’s at least speculate as to why this specific chimney pot proved such an attractive home for the foliage. It’s something to do.
I wonder how geese judge the quality of their food. Are some particular types of moss more tasty or succulent than others, for example? Are these particular cobbles, found beside the dry dock in Hebden Bridge, considered a premium dining establishment or more of an emergency back-up, like the take-away kebab at 3am moment?
This is the second Canada goose in a week — but there are a lot of them about. And, to be honest, it was either that or the second heavy black cloud in a week, ’cause there are still a lot of them about too, unfortunately. But it is supposed to be getting more springlike in the next few days.
If this is a specific type of rose, I cannot identify it: Clare tried helping out by doing one of those ‘look for images that resemble this’ searches on Google and it just came up with the name of a company, proving how our informational sphere has been colonised (or something). Perhaps future Google image searches will find this picture and call this breed ‘Crinkly’ because that’s what it is. Which is why I took the shot: I like its crinkliness.
Exactly what species this is, no idea, but this little creature becomes the first specimen of the family Pleurodelinae — the newts — to appear on the blog. Sister Vicki was quite concerned that a heron had been munching on the inhabitants of her garden pond, but this one, at least, is OK so far.
To me it looks like the goose is paddling through paint, a Jackson Pollock-style approach to imposing its artistic views on the world, or at least, this part of the Hebden Water, below the line of shops and apartments on Valley Road. Maybe the bird itself could be a bit more prominent — although its not as if Canada geese are bright red, is it — or I might have zoomed in more, but never mind.
In evolutionary terms ferns are much older than grasses, I believe. There is something primordial about them, a beauty to them as they uncurl, though also something disquieting too. I can quite picture one of these as the model for the creature that bursts out of Kane’s stomach in Alien, though of course that was the genius of H R Giger, who designed it, all based around these natural forms.
This beetle was very purposeful, and it’s a shame that there was no pot of gold (beetle equivalent) at the end of the table outside the pub, but I did help it down to the floor at that point. A test of the micro-focus on the camera, anyway, and its quite precise: the body is pretty much there, but the antennae, they are just that little bit blurred.
Too nice a day to spend it inside whether that was home, the pub or on a train somewhere. And I needed the exercise, hence my walking north from home over the moors to Oxenhope — where, OK, I might have visited a pub, but only after walking 7½ miles to get there. For a chunk of this journey I was being closely watched by various specimens of Ovis aries, both mature and young — the lambs are definitely out.
Being 42 