Life in Colour
Spring Yellows, from Aconites to Buttercups
Ariège, Blogging challenges, North YorkshireSo many of our favourite springtime flowers have cheerful sunny faces., beginning in January with aconites, then going via celandines, daffodils, marsh marigolds, primroses, dandelions and cowslips to glorious meadows of buttercups in June. Here are just a few of them.
I can’t end the post though, without reminding myself of the crowds, the hosts of daffodils in the woodland slopes of the Pyrenees, nearby to where we lived in France. The French don’t have the same love affair with the daffodil that we have here in England, but this was a spectacle I’ve never seen bettered anywhere.
My Smart Phone Selects only Yellow …
Blogging challenges… if that’s what I ask it to do. I must have known about Jude’s Life in Colour challenge when I persuaded it to take these shots.
‘How Wonderful Yellow is. It Stands for the Sun’. part Two
Blogging challenges, France, YorkshireThis is the post that illustrates Van Gogh’s words, rather than my last one. We’ll showcase all the wonderfully optimistic flowers of spring next time. Let’s just pass directly to summer, and enjoy the over-pungent fields of rape; the gorse rollicking over the coastal parts of the Cleveland Way in Yorkshire; a painted lady enjoying summer yellow; fields of sunflowers in France, forever turning their faces to the sun; and finally, yellow’s final fling – harvest season. Just before the bad weather sets in – look at that last foreboding image. Luckily, Jude provides the opportunity for us to hunt down all our yellow-rich images, in her challenge Life in Colour.
Click on any image to view it full size.
‘How wonderful yellow is. It stands for the sun’
Blogging challenges, England, India, SpainAt the moment, we all need the glow, the zing that a good splash of yellow can provide. Luckily, Jude has provided the perfect opportunity for us to hunt down all our yellow-rich images, in her challenge Life in Colour. Let’s have an injection of gutsy, vibrant lemon, amber and gold alongside our long awaited Covid vaccines.
I’d thought of showing those springtime flowers we all love – aconites, daffodils, primrose, tulips and kingcups. But maybe I’ll save those for another day. Here’s a complete hotch-potch of yellows to cheer up a day which, here at least is thoroughly and dismally grey.
The sign that greets me whenever I leave the house 
A shop and its reflections in Granada 
My first friend in Bangalore: the rickshaw driver who took me on a tour of the city 
William, obligingly wearing yellow, at Newby Hall. 
Advance guard at Le Tour de Yorkshire 
A puppet at the Museo del Titere, Cádiz 
A pinted door in Valencia. 
A back street in Seville. 
Garage door in Seville. 
Another Seville door 
Valencia 
A Seville building in need of a make-over gets one …
To view any image full size. just click on it. The quotation of the post title is by Vincent Van Gogh. No wonder he liked sunflowers. And the header photo shows one word from another quotation. Wander round the St. Paul’s area of London and you’ll eventually uncover the whole sentence, from Virginia Woolf’s novel, Jacob’s Room: ‘What are you going to meet if you turn this corner?‘ What indeed? In this area of London, enough to fill an entire guide book.
A superabundance of brown birds
Blogging challenges, WildlifeI seem to have quite a supply of brown birds in my archive, which up until now, I haven’t shared. Here goes:
The rest aren’t square. But they are brown, so Jude can have them for her Life in Colour Challenge.
A greylag goose on our village pond. 
This week’s mystery guest. Please help. 
A parakeet in Málaga 
House sparrows in Berlin 
A godwit at Slimbridge. 
A song thrush in our garden in spring. 
A mallard, RSPB Saltholme 
A sad little nestling, probably pheasant. 
A chaffinch at Scar House Reservoir, Yorkshire
Click on any image to see it in it entirety, full size, and without its being obliterated by captions.
P.S. My mystery bird has now been identified by the wonderful Vogelsnipser, whose blog should be on the list of anyone who enjoys birds. His pictures are fantastic. Here’s what he says: ‘The bird on your photo is a stonechat (saxicola torquatus). males in early-year splendor dress.’
Upbeat Brown
Blogging challenges, Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal, National Trust, North YorkshireThis month, Jude has asked us to find photos featuring brown. Well, I know about brown. Here is brown:
That’s right. Mud. We have mud everywhere.
I could cheer things up a bit however. Look at these. My featured photo was taken near Fountains Abbey only a few weeks ago, and here are more uplifting shots of the world in brown. We’ll start off with some that have been squared up – and can anybody help me identify that butterfly please?:
… and move on to a couple more autumnal scenes from Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal; a fish – part of a wall decoration at the Natural History Museum, London; tree bark: and our logs all stacked up for winter. Click on any photo for a close-up.
