I popped into Masham on Friday afternoon, and found they were already pretty much prepared for this weekend’s annual Sheep Fair. More of this soon, when I’ve downloaded yesterday’s camera photos from this Must-Visit event. Friday’s phone photo offers a preview.
For Brian’s Last on the Card
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.
We don’t know. In the village, we have ponds on either side of the road, so why bother? I suspect they enjoy having every car, motorbike and lorry grind to a halt, allowing a small and patient queue of traffic to form in both directions. Sadly, I’ve always been just a little too far away to get a photo that properly represents the tailback.
Our geese are less than popular here. Because of them, our mallard population’s efforts to breed come to nothing. So far this year, no duckling has survived longer than two days. I’m more hopeful for the moorhens.
The pavements are thick with goose droppings and hard to dodge, especially if you’re a toddler. The geese have spread from their traditional home down the road at Lightwater Valley, where there’s still room for them. On our smaller village ponds, they’ve chased away any of the quite large variety of ducks who used at least to call in for a while.
Looking around the area – generally, it seems that geese – generally – are out for World Domination. They’re tough enough not to be predated, and are fierce unfriendly neighbours. Does it look that way where you are ?
And also I J Khanewala’s Bird of the Week. This is a relatively new challenge- quite a few of you have great shots of birds – why not join in?
It’s spring. It must be. Wild garlic has – almost overnight – started rampaging through the woodlands near our house. A light tang of garlic pervades the air. And I go foraging. This is the season for:
Wild garlic and potato soup Wild garlic pesto Shredded fine and tossed at the last moment into scrambled egg. Shredded and tossed into risotto at the last moment
Have you any favourite recipes?
And have you got a secret piece of ancient woodland where ransoms – the other name for wild garlic – flourish? If so, you’re probably as lucky as me, because wild garlic is often quickly followed by bluebells.
I took my feature photo yesterday, so it qualifies for Brian’s Last on the Card. Accompanying text is rather frowned upon. Tough. This is my post, and I’ll write if I want to.
A lovely walk with friends: up hills, down dales, along two rivers – the Burn and the Ure – and finally, through woodland. Storm Otto had got here first. Look what was across the path.
For Brian Bushboy’s Last on the Card.
A bright, cold, breezy day at Fountains Abbey. My last photo of the month is the feature photo: it suddenly went all dark and mysterious, just for a few moments. Before – and after – that, it was all sunshine and snowdrops.
For Brian (aka Bushboy)’s Last on the Card.
Lockdown in 2020 taught us to value the tiny slivers of the unexpected in our necessarily limited ‘Daily Exercise’. Here’s yesterday’s unexpected: a cluster of tiny mushrooms in autumn-leaf red, cheerfully growing in the middle of the village cricket pitch. I don’t know what they are. Do you?
They’re multi-tasking mushrooms, because they’re here for Becky’s Walking Squares, as well as for Brian’s Last on the Card for October. Brian insists that we don’t edit our photos, but if I need a square photo, I’ll just have to make a subtle clip, top and bottom. I might get away with it.
We all trotted off to Harewood House yesterday. This must-visit stately home between Leeds and Harrogate is a little notorious these days because the enormous wealth and privilege it represents was built as a direct result of the slave trade. Designed by architects John Carr and Robert Adam, it was built, between 1759 and 1771, for Edwin Lascelles, 1st Baron Harewood, a wealthy West Indian plantation and slave-owner.
These days, the family does what it can to move on from these distasteful roots. I’ll probably write more later about a current exhibition there – Radical Acts: Why Craft Matters, which looks at a wide range of social justice and environmental issues. But I found my last photo of the month, taken there, irresistible. It’s perhaps not the sort of poster you’d normally find gracing a stately home?
For Brian (Bushboy)’s Last on the Card: July 2022. A chance to show our last photo of the month, however good, bad or indifferent.
Have I really not taken a photograph since last Sunday? Apparently not. But my last snapshot is a good souvenir. It’s the final event in Ripon’s first Theatre Festival, and here we all are, all 500 of us, at Fountains Abbey, waiting for Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream played by the spirited and energetic Illyria to begin.
For Brian’s Last on the Card challenge, I’m only supposed you show my last photo, and without commentary at that, but why shouldn’t I give you a flavour of Saturday in the Market Square, with its bands, its jugglers, its stilt walkers, its slapstick entertainers?
My choir was part of the Fringe too, and sang a cappella at the bandstand in the Spa Gardens bright and early on the Saturday. But I couldn’t take a photo and sing too. You can take multi-tasking too far.
As you wander down the hill to Fountains Abbey, and arrive at West Green, you’ll spot a tree, a sweet chestnut tree with – how odd! – a girdle of headphones hanging from its branches.
This information board explains all: these headphones enable you to listen in, via highly sensitive microphones, to the hidden sounds of the tree.
Truly – it’s astonishing, mesmerising. Just as our blood courses round our body, day in, day out, so water and air courses constantly through the tree. Through headphones, it sounds something like the tinkling of a mountain stream as it tumbles over pebbles. And behind it, as your ears adjust, there’s a low, more intermittent soft rumbling sound. This is the tree moving. Saturday was a still day, but we could hear that rumbling as we listened closely. On a windy day, I wonder what we’d have heard?
This next photo is the last I took, and the last one of all for April, so one for Brian Bushboy’s Last on the Card
During May, I’m taking a break. I probably won’t even have a chance to read the posts of those of you I follow. When I get the chance though, I’ll try to send a virtual postcard or two.
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