Come away with the raggle taggle gypsy-o
As promised last night, my dilemma is solved, using the same image in two different ways. Paula is asking for traces of the past in nature, well despite a volcano erupting, there are traces of the past in the little cottage as well as the silver birch trees that are struggling to hold on.
Paula has rather more dramatic volcanic traces to share with us, and you can join in here.
I’m having one of those spells where I’m all behind with everything, blogging included, and it’s not likely to improve much for a couple of weeks. I did read that the Weekly Photo Challenges are coming to an end, so I decided to post for the penultimate one, the theme of which is twisted. I hope these images, taken in Sicily, fit the bill.
It’s a pity it’s ending, but as Jude said it has become a bit repetitive recently. It’s been a great way of making friends, from all over the world. there are lots of smaller challenges of all kinds, and who knows, Lucid Gypsy might become a little less photo lead.
Thanks to a FB post in a very local group, I was drawn to check for myself on my way home from work today. Yes, it really was a Paulownia Tomentosa, the Chinese Foxglove tree.
Still very young, it’s planted in the grounds of a Health Centre, and will eventually grow into a magnificent specimen.
This is one tree that I plan to watch for years to come.
If the amount of blackthorn flowers is anything to go by, there’ll be plenty of sloes this year. Has anyone ever made sloe gin, I bet Tish has.
The river and mill leat area is my favourite place to walk the dogs at the moment, it’s filled with wild flowers and the sound of birdsong, there the blackthorn is prolific.
Join this weeks photo challenge at the Daily Post.
There’s something about transitions and thresholds that I find fascinating, yet I can’t pinpoint it. Walking the dogs today, I saw this very handsome, but still very sleepy tree.
Then further across the fields I spy this blossom.
Last year’s oak leaves hanging on.
This little wood wasn’t here the last time I came to Eastern fields.
Hooray for hawthorn, creamy flowers in May, Hawthorn Jelly later in summer.
The tops of these trees are waking up, I must re-learn the tree names that I knew in infant school.
Oh the limitations of a phone camera!
A serpent awakening?
Let’s end with damsons – or sloes?
We’re all observing the late arrival of spring in the UK, and this is my second post for ‘Awakening’, this weeks photo challenge.
Last Saturday afternoon, I was sitting quietly at home when I heard a distinctive two syllable bird song. I slowly stood up and staying well back from the window I watched as a pair of little birds flew back and forth to the feeder on the olive tree. I knew they’d be off if I made any sudden movements, but when they were out of sight I went to get my camera. They must have seen me spying on them because they stayed further away on John Downie’s budding branches, still coming and going.
I watched for half an hour desperately trying to get a decent photo, several feet inside of the window with unsettled light.
They are of course, Great Tits.
Now, Paula’s Thursday challenge this week is zoom in zoom out. So here’s a closer view of these cute, but also quite stroppy little birds.
Paula zoomed in on a beautiful waterfall in Croatia, ‘stopping’the flow to create a white curtain of water.
Every year I wait patiently for the first daffodils I see in full bloom, and it’s almost always on the hospital campus that I find them.
If it’s still January when they appear, I’m thrilled to bits, they’re my own little spring watch and make my heart sing. Do you have your own special sign that winter’s loosening it’s hold?
Lucid Gypsy 