Thursday 3rd August 2017, 11.55am (day 2,170)
I sympathise. I’m sure we’ve all been there.
Back out into the mountains — for a long and rather difficult walk from Coniston to Eskdale. This shot was taken towards the end, by which time I had already done 12 miles and was feeling rather knackered. The sheep seen here probably wondered what I was doing out on their heaf. I was wondering this too, to some extent.
Spent a little while today watching this bird (probably a jackdaw although I have given up trying to identify these species accurately) working out how it could get at the bounty inside this rubbish skip with its marginally open lid. This was the moment of triumph.
Anthropomorphism: the attribution of human characteristics or behaviour to an animal or object. Hard to avoid, particularly if you are the maker of a Disney movie. But I still say this fly looks proud enough to me. And like it’s enjoying the sunshine.
Another one of these time-of-year things, annual photographic events — you’ve seen this flower (wood cranesbill) before, not to mention insects plunging themselves within, to extract the bounty.
Continuing to clear the allotment, I find this cobweb behind the most concealed of our collection of water butts. I like its dappling by sunlight and the way that tiny flower has fallen onto and nestled into it, pushing down delicately, like it’s a meniscus or the most fragile of hammocks one can imagine.
The garden is a riot of vegetation; only most of it is growing in places it shouldn’t, the consequence of a month of neglect. A weekend of agricultural labour looms. Attractive as it is this unidentified plant will be categorised as weed; its days are numbered.
The weather may not have been all that great for us humans but I doubt a sheep judges their quality of life with respect to much more than the food spread out around them — and in that regard, this sheep clearly has things very fine indeed, going by the smile on its face. Taken on the very edge of the Lake District, the hill of Cunswick Scar, near Kendal.
Things have been happening in the outside world of course, but on a purely personal level it’s been an uneventful period: 12 of the last 16 pictures taken in Hebden Bridge. Went on a walk today mainly to give myself something to photograph; the buttercups helped it work out. I’m off on my travels again tomorrow however.
Dropping down from Sergeant Man to Tarn Crag, in Easdale in the Lake District, I saw ahead a small herd of young deer, about three hundred yards ahead. I stopped to get the camera out. They stopped and looked at me for a while; I mean, look at this picture, they clearly know I’m there. They sized me up. I sized them up. Got a few shots. Then off they went, to do whatever they do during the daytime, and I carried on my way. Everyone was satisfied with the transaction I think.