Celebrating gardens, photography and a creative life
When I first noticed these weird flowers in Sunnyhurst Wood, I couldn’t fathom what kind of plant I was seeing. In places, they grew among leaves, but these were leaves of other plants. Where they were alone, it was clear that the flowers were leafless. Continue reading “Lathraea clandestina (Purple toothwort) For KindaSquare”
When I discovered that today was World Yarn Bombing Day I had to share this picture. A yarn motif left in a wood may strike some readers as out of place (and I don’t see much yarn bombing in North West England*) but I don’t think the tree minds. If the tree kept a diary, it would surely celebrate the attention and the intention. Continue reading “Yarn Bombing Day”
Photographing bluebells presents several problems: they dance on their stems in a gentle breeze; they often grow in dappled shade which is magical on the eye but blinding to the camera; their blue appears a bit insignificant from further away; and they are usually a very different colour to how they appear. The first two shots are fairly accurate for colour. Continue reading “Taking Pictures of Bluebells”
When people are indoors, nature seems more in the spotlight and its imperturbability strikes me as a superpower.
Have daffodils always been this yellow and crocuses so purple? I pay attention, but it feels like I barely noticed before. Now it’s the turn of the deciduous trees. Continue reading “Spring Tree Canopies, Sunnyhurst Wood”
The rain has been beating down hard against the house in such rage that I went to inspect: it was a hailstorm, on the 2nd of May. My Dad, Jack Rushton, was always in tune with nature, more so than he sometimes was with people. He’d have known if the hail was unusual at this time of year or par for the course. He would have been 90 today. He died too early by any standards: my sister and I never got the chance to relate to him with truly adult minds. Of course some of his messages stay with me.
His love of plants, animals and nature placed the natural world at the centre of things. He knew that English bluebells were the delicate ones, with flowers that hung from just one side of the scape.
He helped make sure my sister and I had the kind of childhood where climbing trees, inspecting stones in streams, crossing moorland, hanging around other people’s allotments, collecting horse pooh for roses, growing plants from seeds, cramming the yard full of so many pots you could hardly wind your way through it, and dissecting owl pellets to see what they had eaten would always seem normal. Continue reading “Memories Of Dad”
I’m very fond of bluebells. I’ve been teased for smiling away tears when, spotting two or three in flower in the USA, my mind turned to the hundreds of thousands I was missing back at home.
My first memory of bluebells was seeing a mass of flowers covering a hillside in Sunnyhurst Wood, in my home county, Lancashire. My Dad – the kind of person who’d bring home owl pellets to show his kids what the bird had been eating – would have known they were in flower and had taken us out exploring. Continue reading “English Or Spanish Bluebells”
As it snowed overnight, I thought I’d invite you to join me on a virtual stroll round Sunnyhurst Wood, an early Edwardian park in my home town Darwen, Lancashire. Continue reading “Sunnyhurst Wood in the Snow”
