I was certainly enjoying the sunshine today — a glorious day. Whether the horse was or not, I can only speculate, but it looks contented enough. Taken towards the end of my first County Top walk for over two months: the houses in the background are part of the village of Huthwaite, the highest settlement in Nottinghamshire.
I know this is grainy. But it’s been a long time since I made a point of seeing that kind of thing as a marker of quality. This shot will do as well as any other to epitomise my day, or at least, the part of it I spent hiking up near the Emley Moor TV mast, which is as good a Yorkshire landmark as anything. I seem to still be continuing the blog so on we go with its 14th year, and happy birthday to me too: you can do the sums.
More plantage. But it’s the season for it. There’s a shortage of vegetable oil at the moment, apparently — as Ukraine was a major supplier, but this year is not, for obvious reasons. So the more of this bright yellow stuff that we grow, the better: at least, if we want to fry our food in an adequately healthy way.
I’m not trying to be overtly metaphorical here. But this shot certainly sums up today’s weather. Enough snow to feel, not enough to make a difference, all under steel-grey skies.
A very pleasant summer’s day, the land around feels like it has reached peak fecundity. Nice to look at, although not so good for my nasal membranes, frankly. But that’s the price I pay.
The village of South Milford, east of Leeds, makes an exceptionally wet debut on the blog, and thus a rather grim one, despite being a pleasant place that hosted me entertainingly enough this afternoon. But it was damp, oh yes indeed.
Ragwort, or Jacobaea vulgaris, is one of those plants that demonstrate environmental priorities. Its bitter leaves are full of alkaloids and poisonous to horses and cattle, so farmers are supposed to keep it under control and there are acts of Parliament that declare it, by law, a ‘noxious weed’. But apparently horses don’t eat it anyway, as it tastes vile. Meanwhile, it is highly beneficial to pollinating insects: indeed, for some, its their only source of food. So let that ragwort grow, I say. This large clump of it currently flourishes in a field above Hurst Road.
I reckon that under these circumstances, everyone is getting to know their immediate local environment better than they might have done last year. Reached through the woods near my house, the meadows on the upper terraces of the valley, near Old Town, are currently a riot of buttercups. Their yellow carpet is a more natural version of those blankets of oil-seed rape that one gets in more arable districts: and more pleasing, somehow.
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.
To call the weather over the last 7 days ‘unsettled’ is a gross understatement — it’s hardly been the same for half an hour at a time, all week. This was taken as I exploited a relatively sunny period this afternoon to grab more blackberries. (I seek to make wine again.) Most of the rest of the day after this, it was wet. Then dry again. Repeat…
Being 42 