spring – From Pyrenees to Pennines

Spring has Sprung?

This week, Dawn of The Day After fame, has asked us to consider Spring for Leanne’s Monochrome Madness. No, she doesn’t want daffodils, blossom, gambolling lambs (though actually they would definitely do). Instead she wants us to treat the word as a verb, and find images about springing, or synonyms thereof.

So I’ve headed straight for some shots from Ripon Theatre Festival last year, from the weekend of street entertainment:

… which put me in mind of more dancing, of the Morris variety …

The dancers of Four Hundred Roses are my featured photo, where Morris dancing meets belly dancing meets steampunk.

Then I remembered an exhibition in The Baltic, Gateshead where an astronaut was about to leap on my head, And the day at Thorpe Perrow Birds of Prey Centre, when an owl plunged down to seize a meaty titbit, before springing up and away once more.

And then those springing lambs. Considering I live in Sheep Central, you’d think I’d have plenty of energetic shots. Nope. This is the best I can do.

Finally, I’ll give water a look-in. It can be fairly lively. Here’s poor Atlas at Castle Howard, bearing the whole world on his shoulders. And getting soaked in the process as water leaps and plashes around him. And next to him is a frisky and ebullient waterfall near Muker .

Some Trees, Some Blossom. Spring has Arrived!

Some local, some spotted in London last week.

For Leanne’s Monochrome Madness.

(Nearly) Silent Sunday

Look what I spotted while strolling through the village yesterday. And us int’ Frozzen North an’ all.

Silent Sunday.

PS. I’m aware that on mobile phones (certainly Android ones anyway) the featured photo never displays to readers. Is there a way of fixing this? Either as a poster, who would prefer their photo to be visible, or as a reader of the posts of others? I’ve tried to research this, with no success.

As Yellow as Spring

Let’s extend the definition of Spring to include a bright day in January, encouraging aconites to show their faces, right through to asphodels in May. Let’s showcase the yellow flowers of spring, brightening our days with a feeling of optimism.

Denzil’s Nature Photo Challenge #11: Yellow

Now is the month of Maying …..

It’s been quite a treat to stare out of our kitchen window these last two days. We have three lilac trees, one purple, one mauve and one white, which put on a spectacular and perfumed performance for one week only in May. Two mornings ago, there was not a bud in sight. By the evening, tight little green buds had appeared. Yesterday they were bigger. Today they’ve revealed their colours. Tomorrow they’ll be out. Then we go on holiday ….. and miss the rest.

Here’s what these hot few days in early May have produced in the garden. A few early flowers: narcissi , primroses still survive – just.

Naked trees have suddenly unfurled tender young leaves. Blossom blossoms. Bluebells and dandelions and poinsettia have appeared. The first wisteria flowers shyly peek from behind their delicate leaves. Spring has sprung.

And here is some May time music: Thomas Morley’s ‘Now is the month of maying’, sung by the Beaumont Singers.

Spring: red, yellow, white or green?

I’m now on Day Nine of The Great British Coughing Virus, and as you may be unlucky enough to know, it ain’t fun. I’ve done nothing worth writing about, and my creativity quotient is at an all-time-low. Instead, I thought I’d share with you the piece I wrote for my U3A Writing Group the other week, following the prompt ‘red’.

Spring: Red, yellow, white or green?

Spring is not red. Spring is white, as the late snowdrops poke their heads above the frosty soil. It’s yellow with primroses, daffodils and aconites: and later, laburnum and dandelions. It’s fresh citrus green, with young tender grass and unfurling leaves.

Summer is red. Summer is scarlet strawberries, velvet raspberries and glossy cherries. It’s poppies among fields of wheat. It’s glowing noses and peeling shoulders on a crowded beach. It’s roses and nasturtiums and salvia and geranium vying for space in the summer flower bed.

Autumn is red. In autumn, leaves drop from the trees, turning from green to yellow and then to russet red as they reach the ground. Crab apples glow on trees, and foragers like me gather them, and tumble them into a pan to simmer with sugar and spices to make a translucent ruby jelly for spreading on toast through the bleak winter months.

Winter is red. Bright berries poke out from beneath the sleek green leaves of the holly. Vermilion rose hips stand starkly on black branches, cheerfully transforming barren twigs and colouring the winter landscape. There’s little Robin Redbreast, perching on a scarlet pillar box, and all those gaudy Christmas decorations.

Spring is not red. Or at least I didn’t think so, not until last week. Here’s what I found on a walk across a Daleside farmland: a ewe, with two only-just-born lambs. Her babies were stained bright red with her blood, as she licked them clean. Spring that day was a Red Letter Day, celebrating new life.

A ewe and her new lambs near West Witton, Wensleydale.

Another hint of Spring

Walking past Ripon Cathedral this morning, I was stopped dead in my tracks by this host of coral-coloured cyclamen. Can Spring be far behind?

Spring is springing

I was out for a convalescent constitutional this afternoon: William had passed A Bug onto me last week, and I’ve been a little delicate. I hadn’t taken my camera with me, only my phone, so these images aren’t the finest. But I don’t care. They’re evidence that spring is on the way. I wish you could hear, as I could, the birds singing as they do only when they too know that short winter days have passed. Yes, spring is springing.

Lambs at Easter.

A sunny walk round Roecliffe on Good Friday brought us face to face with these lambs, doing what lambs do best: feeding, resting and being curious.

Happy Easter!

Snowdrops: this year’s final curtain call

I know I’ve mentioned them already, but this year’s crop of snowdrops has been quite astonishing. Maybe they weren’t quite such a feature of our local landscape in France. Maybe when we last lived in England, because we were in town, we saw them only tucked into quiet corners of suburban gardens, or on occasional weekend sorties. Perhaps snowdrops round here are always this special. But for us, this year has been a real treat.

Snowdrops have been almost the first thing we see as we set foot outside the house. They’ve been in dense groves in nearby woodland. They’ve been on sheltered verges. At first slender, pointing their sheathed leaves upwards in search of light, now they’ve opened their petals into blowsy bells and flattened their leaves gently towards the ground beneath. This is the sure signal that they’re on the way out. Gardens are displaying the first of the early crocus, and even daffodils are opening in more sheltered spots. I think snowdrops prefer to be the centre of attention, prepared to share the woodland only with occasional patches of aconites. Now that spring is really on its way, and the birds are honing their voices in preparation for their courtship rituals, the snowdrops are preparing to allow their flowers and leaves to wither and die, as the bulbs enjoy their long and nourishing hibernation below ground.