From Pyrenees to Pennines

Rompecabezas

Every month, Rebecca over at Fake Flamenco sets a poetry challenge. This month, her chosen theme is – puzzle. Once our offerings are in, she sets herself a puzzle, and translates every single one into Spanish. Hence my post’s title. I reckon translating mine will definitely set out to romperle la cabeza (break her head).

Puzzle

I'm always frazzled by a puzzle.
My mind dries up, my brain's a-sizzle.
The answer's muzzled in my head
then bustles off - it's such a hassle.
I'm frizzled up and start to grizzle.

Let's just give up - go on the razzle.

Karla Hernandez: Unsplash. The header image, also from Unsplash, is by Mel Poole.

Townie Toddler in the Countryside

Townie Toddler has gone back to Spain. The house suddenly seems unwontedly calm and quiet. Rather dull really. This is probably because the two old fogies who live here have no remaining energy – for a day or two at least.

Townie Toddler’s mum wanted her daughter to spend time being a child of the countryside – spending time with its animals, plants and wide open spaces. So off we went on Saturday to Borrowby Show. Horses from shire horses to the tiniest of ponies, sheep, dogs and small animals were all Being displayed to best advantage. Oddly, the only cattle were two charming Jersey calves. One of the set pieces in the afternoon was of The Hunt. Definitely NOT our thing. But Anaïs enjoyed the chance to meet the docile and well-behaved beagles who later tore round the show ring in pursuit of – luckily – a less than realistic hare, who doubtless smelt right.

Here’s our day:

Then the next day, on our way to the airport, it was Meanwood Valley Urban Farm. It was somewhere we often went when we lived in Leeds, and the children were smaller. We loved it then. Now it’s re-invented itself. It’s larger. It has peaceful walks where you can lose yourself in dense copses and apparently distant views. It has all the farmyard animals you’d expect. Yet it’s within walking distance of Leeds City Centre. It has a vegi-box scheme. A bike workshop. It works with volunteers, those with learning disabilities, disengaged young people, and is a welcoming and environmentally focussed part of its local community. It also has a really great café. We spoke to staff and volunteers who talked with pride and enthusiasm about this special place. Almost worth moving back to Leeds for. It was a wonderful finish to Anaïs’ and Emily’s English break.

Brian? Do you see those pigs? That shot’s my Last on The Card in July.

Old News Comes into its Own

As soon as Denzil asked us to focus on tree bark for this week’s Nature Photo Challenge, I remembered a visit we’d had to Westonbirt Arboretum with my daughter-in-law’s parents. I blogged about it at the time: it was all but ten years ago. Time to re-purpose this old post!

‘Trees are the earth’s endless effort to speak to the listening heaven’*

September 22nd, 2013

On Friday our co-in-laws took us to Westonbirt Arboretum. If you’re spending a few days round Bristol and Bath there’s no better place to recharge your batteries. You could pass the morning in the Old Arboretum, a carefully designed landscape dating from the 1850’s. There are something like two and a half thousand varieties of tree – 16,000 specimens in all, from all over the world, planted according to ‘picturesque’ principles of the 18th and 19th centuries, offering beautiful vistas, enchanted glades and stately avenues. After a light lunch in the on-site restaurant you could go on to explore the Silk Woods an ancient, semi-natural woodland, or the grassy meadows of the Downs.

It was Robert Holford who designed and encouraged the planting of the Arboretum, back in the mid 19th century. This was a period when plant-hunters were bringing new and exotic species back from their world-wide travels. Holford was able to finance some of these expeditions, and the Arboretum contains many of the specimens his scientific adventurers brought back.

Truly, it’s a magical place. We arrived, let out a collective sigh, and simply allowed stress and worry to fall away. Strolling about, we gazed upwards at trees whose end-of-summer leaves seemed to be fingering the clouds, into copses where we could glimpse others already turning to the ochres and russets of Autumn, and then closely at the trees themselves. It was the bark that caught our attention close up. Smooth and silvery, brown and knobbly, grey and wrinkled, the variety astonished us. Take a look at these. And if you get a chance to visit this Arboretum, at any time of year, then take it.

*Rabindrath Tagore

Townie Toddler comes to the Countryside…

… and meets sheep and ducks and fish. Among other forms of animal, bird and insect life.

For Debbie’s Six Word Saturday.

‘Inspiration is needed in geometry, just as much as in poetry’

We were in the grounds of Harewood House the other day. Well, mainly we were in its adventure playground: we had our daughter and two year old granddaughter in tow. But we did walk through the formal outdoor areas near the house too, and we happened upon this hyper-geometric topiary garden.

I wondered if the quotation by Aleksandr Pushkin which forms the title of this post fitted the bill. A well-formed garden seems to me a thing of poetry. And this well-formed garden, which I was surprised to find I rather liked, is a thing of geometry too.

It’s the first time I’ve joined in Paula’s Words of Wisdom challenge, where she invites an image with a matching quotation. Let’s see if it cuts the mustard.

Mainly about reeds and rushes.

This week’s Nature Photo Challenge from Denzil is about water plants. My archive has not been especially revealing, and if you think I’m going out on this day of torrential rain to find more, you’ve got another think coming. Perhaps this is a chance to join in to with Jez’s Water Water Everywhere challenge too?

I’ll issue a challenge of my own too. I rather like the images below of spiky, statuesque reeds and grasses in black and white. But perhaps you prefer the original colour?

My first one is from the lake at Kiplin Hall, North Yorkshire

Then we’ll move to Lake Prespa in Greece, where the reeds obscure a handsome egret.

Then back to England, to the River Wye in Derbyshire.

This is a local Nature Reserve at Staveley, North Yorkshire on a bitingly cold day which at least the bulrushes could endure.

My header photo is also from Lake Prespa. I thought the egret and his reedy background demanded colour. Just as my final shot, taken in the gardens of the National Museum, Seoul. South Korea rather requires that splash of orange.

Today, I’m blowing my own trumpet

Last weekend, Masham, the town up the road had its wildly popular Steam Engine and Fair Organ Rally. With heavy rain forecast, this year we didn’t go to the out-of-town fields (doubtless muddy) where it’s held. Anyway, we had an exhibition to get to – Masham Photographic Club always has a display in town during the Fair, and invites members of the public to vote for their favourite four images, out of – this year – a field of 57.

By Monday, the votes were counted and the winners announced. Astonishingly, I took first place. And second. Probably because they’re local views. The winning shot is my header photo, and below is the runner-up.

The header photo was just sheer serendipity. Walking down the lane early one morning I saw the scene you see now. I jut happened to have my phone with me, and captured the moment.

For Debbie’s Six Word Saturday.

What’s the Point of Fences?

Here in England, in the countryside, we tend to rely on walls and hedges to divide up farms and fields, leaving fences to suburban gardens. Though fences are becoming increasingly common as the years pass. And sometimes fences are added to walls that are getting old and past it. In this shot, I think the fence may be past it too.

I’ve been looking for fences for this week’s Lens-Artists Photo Challenge. I found fences to contain animals:

I found fences that have objects suspended from them:

… deliberately in the case of the moles. Molecatchers round here have the unhappy habit of suspending their deceased victims from fences, to advertise their services. And, perhaps, to deter other moles …

… accidentally in the case of sheep’s wool…

… deliberately in the case of young lovers declaring their – perhaps – lasting attachment to each other by attaching a padlock to a fence edging a bridge or harbour railing…

Then there are fences for perching on.

And there are fences for making statements. Here’s a local garden fence repurposed during Covid Lockdown in 2020 to thank the NHS. The nurse behind was part of our village’s scarecrow competition which celebrated keyworkers, from NHS staff to supermarket delivery drivers.

Local farmers at election time tend to give the oxygen of publicity to our sitting MP, by advertising him on their walls and fences It wasn’t me who bent the poster over, making it nearly illegible. But I’d definitely have given a hand to the perpetrator.

And finally, though in fact it’s my header photo: a fence in winter. It’s by way of being a historical curiosity. Snow is so last decade, or even last century.

For Dawn’s Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #258

Birds in Black

To go with the dismal weather we are having here in Britain this July, Denzil’s Nature Photo Challenge #20 asks us to focus on black. Inevitably, most of my shots are of birds. Let’s go …

That cormorant spreading its wings at the end of the pier at Whitby is a shot I’ve shown before and will probably do so again. I’m quite fond of it, so I’ve made it my header shot.

These shags are from the Farne Islands, currently closed to the public during the devastating avian ‘flu outbreak.

… And this is also where we saw these guillemots.

Here’s a blackbird, silhouetted against the evening sky.

I can’t resist taking you to Studley Royal, where I spend so much time – as do the jackdaws who think they own the place. Maybe they’re as much clerical grey as black. Never mind. I wonder if this is the one that Sarah (Travel with Me) snapped in her own response to this challenge?

Let’s go into town for the next two shots: starlings gathering on the weather vane of my grandchildren’s school, and a tame raven in Knaresborough.

But I can’t let you go without a sweet treat. Here are some juicy blackberries.

And in fact, I still can’t let you go. Not till I’ve shared this crow presiding over a street in Berlin. Or he was when I was last there.

I have just counted. I have offered you ‘Five-and-twenty black birds’. But not baked in a pie. And not twenty four. (English nursery rhyme, non-UK readers!)

And I’m going to add the cormorant – or any other of my featured birds of your choice – to IJ Khanewala’s Bird of the Week challenge.

A Simple Holiday

It’s summer – well, here in Europe it is anyway – and our thoughts turn to holidays. So when Philo of Philosophy through Photography fame threw down the challenge to celebrate Simplicity for Lens-Artists Challenge #257, I thought I’d leaf through my holiday albums and see what I could find.

Let’s go to the beach first, in Alnmouth Northumberland.