Spring is springing

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Funny how a certain combination of blue and green makes any view look like a postcard shot.



Yew flowers. The yew in the front garden is billowing great clouds of pollen dust every time the wind blows.



Vetch foliage.







I do like the way the lichen has taken what was a pretty unprepossessing fence post of reinforced concrete and made it really rather beautiful. I am a bit of a lichen nut anyway, and like the one on the elder buds above: not lichen nut enough to be able to identify any. Maybe it's about time I learned.




There are still a lot of beautiful hangovers from winter: I was always fascinated by the ash tree in the garden at home when growing up and used to love waiting for the keys to spiral down to earth.



So much of what I know about the natural world came from Enid Blyton's Book of Nature, now thankfully reissued.
Alas, there is no point whatsoever getting a copy for my children. I loved this book: loved looking out for everything . Some things, like coltsfoot, I didn't see until years after - quite how I managed to miss such a common plant I don't know, but I did. I blame living in cities for 20 years. The things I'd never managed to see but which were mentioned in the book lived on, and still do live on, in my memory, waiting for me to see them one day. There's an excellent blog here which is becoming a sort of virtual nature table.

Comments

Juliet said…
Lovely photos. I'm a bit of lichen nut too, so those are definitely my favourites. That was one Enid Blyton book I didn't have, unfortunately - it looks surprisingly well illustrated for its time!
11 March 2009 at 20:00
Unknown said…
The house where my parents used to live had washing line poles of rough concrete like the post in the photo. Over the years they developed a lovely pattern of lichens and looked quite harmonious with the garden. I was disappointed when they were removed and replaced with shiny steel poles.
11 March 2009 at 20:26
Jane Badger said…
The colour plates are lovely in that Blyton. I'm still inwardly debating whether to crack and get a copy or not.

Gillian - shiny steel poles are definitely not the same. I don't know enough about steel to know what nature would do to it over time.
12 March 2009 at 11:03
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