Apple blossom

Isn't apple blossom the prettiest sight? I love how the little buds are deep pink and fade to white as they open. At Harlow Carr Gardens, they have a long row of apple trees, pruned into a dense hedge, at the back of the kitchen garden. They are a delight all year round as, of course, they fruit with hundreds of small, shiny, red apples in the autumn, when they look almost as though they have Christmas decorations hung all over them. But this seemed like an appropriate post for May Day! 

Harlow Carr bits and bobs!

I generally like the photos in a blog post to have some kind of unifying theme that makes sense... but so often when I have categorised them, I end up with a few random ones that don't really fit, a kind of photographic 'junk drawer' as it were. 

Here are a few from Harlow Carr Gardens: some colourful willow stems, bundled and drying, next to a living willow arbour, just beginning to get its leafy covering. 

Spring flowers - daffodils, wood anemones, primroses - provided a pretty backdrop for a song thrush, hunting for tasty morsels in the earth. Song thrushes used to be plentiful when I was a child and nowadays I hardly ever seem to spot one; their numbers have declined alarmingly in the UK. 

There's an area with a bird hide and bird feeders and I popped in to see if I could spot any interesting small birds. I'd seen a wren hopping around, though couldn't get a photo, and there are always friendly robins around the place. All I could see was a very colourful cock pheasant. Perhaps he'd scared the little birds away, or more likely some talkative humans had disturbed their peace. (I can never understand how people don't know you should be quiet in a bird hide!) 

Also at the bird feeders, a wily grey squirrel. He hid for a while in the shadows and then scooted up a tree, along a wire and hung upside down to fill himself with bird seed from a feeder. Clearly very practised at that manoeuvre!

One of my favourite spring bulbs is the trillium. There are lots of different varieties, all characterised by three petals. This one was a clean, neat looking white variety, very attractive. 

In the woodland, ferns are unfurling. They always remind me of a nest of snakes! (Not that I've ever seen a nest of snakes!) I can remember learning the complex life cycle of ferns in biology at school. Absolutely fascinating. 

Spring woodland

One of the prettiest areas of Harlow Carr Gardens in spring is the woodland slope behind the Old Bath House. It has been planted in recent years with hundreds of spring flowering bulbs, which are now maturing and give a wonderful tapestry-like effect to the woodland floor. 

Some of the most elegant are these yellow flowers, like stars, fluted bells or perhaps little pixie hats. I'm having difficulty identifying them definitively, but I think they are Erythronium 'Pagoda'. There were similar flowers in different colours. There are some cream coloured ones in the right foreground corner of the photo above. 

Wood anemones mingle with a hybrid cowslip with orange flowers (above).

Below, the white flowers are some sort of double hellebore, attractively paired here with a variety of dicentra (bleeding hearts). 

Mossy tree stumps look really lovely planted around with spring flowers.  I sat on a bench in the woodland to drink my coffee, and there was so much to gaze at, such delicate little blooms everywhere. Delightful. 

Water : garden

Where a garden is large enough, it's always nice to have a water feature or two, not just for the visual effect but to support wildlife as well. Harlow Carr of course, with its 58 acres, has room for several: a large lake, a stream and many smaller pools and ponds. At this time of year the waterside plants come to life. 

There are lots of yellows, with varieties of marsh marigolds among them. I can't work out what the white spear-shaped flowers (above) are, maybe arum lilies?

In one of the ponds, the bogbean was in flower. The white star-shaped blooms have a curious, feathery appearance.  

 

Spring flowers

There's an area of grassy banking at Harlow Carr that is covered in wildflowers at this time of year. Primroses are a spring favourite. Dandelions are ubiquitous, of course, spread everywhere by their fluffy seedheads that catch the wind. Then there are the bright yellow bells of cowslips. (I've also noticed these on roadside verges and roundabouts around here, which is lovely.) 

Rather more unusual were these deep pink miniature tulips. I've never seen tulips so small. 

So many primroses everywhere... I felt I was following 'the primrose path of dalliance', as Shakespeare put it. In pursuit of pleasure but hopefully without a disastrous ending! 

Double happy

A visit to one of my happy places, Harlow Carr Gardens, at my favourite time of year, made me doubly happy. It was a beautiful spring day, warm and sunny. The camellias and some rhododendrons are in bloom, spring bulbs bursting out all over the place, lots of colour. Amazing. 

Easter Sunday walk

Easter Sunday was another lovely, sunny, warm spring day. What a delight! After church in the morning, I decided I must make the most of it and had a circular walk in Bingley. The golf course wasn't very busy and all those greens - well kept lawns and fresh foliage on the trees - lent a feeling of soothing tranquillity to the scene. 

The ford at Beckfoot Bridge is always an attractive place to linger. The stone packhorse bridge was built in 1723, replacing an earlier wooden bridge. Packhorse bridges were designed with low parapets to allow a horse heavily laden with panniers to cross unimpeded.  Modern safety concerns resulted in the wooden fence being added. 

There's a lovely view over the river here, looking across to Bingley's Myrtle Park. Where I stopped to take this photo, there's a house right behind me. It enjoys this gorgeous panorama but also has to put up with a public right of way across its front garden! 

The woods down to the park had the beginnings of a beautiful show of bluebells, not quite in their full splendour yet. 

Tales of the riverbank

We've had weeks without any significant rainfall in March and April. A walk along the River Wharfe at Bolton Abbey really underlined that, as the river was as low as I've ever seen it, certainly at this time of year. The Dales rivers do, however, rise and fall very quickly in response to the weather. Down in the valley, the trees are later than some to green up; the sunlight doesn't penetrate here in winter. 

The narrow and deep gorge of The Strid was so low and calm that the water seemed barely to be moving, just ambling along gently. You can see how it more normally looks HERE.  It would be tempting to some, when it is so calm, to try to leap the gap. People have perished in the attempt, since the water depth in the narrow strait is about 9-10m, the same as the height of two double decker buses; the rocks are undercut and there are very strong currents. 

 

First bluebells

On a recent walk at Bolton Abbey, I was delighted to see that bluebells are beginning to appear in the woods there. They were not yet at their peak - and I'd expect it to be another few weeks before they peak in my local spots like Hirst Woods. It's usually more like early to mid May before they are in full bloom there.  It very much seems to depend on the terrain and the amount of sunlight that an area gets.

I love them; the waves of blue across a woodland floor really bring me joy. 

Here's the blossom!

There may not have been any cherry blossom out in Addingham the other day but now, suddenly, it's everywhere.  These mature trees bordering the road into Bingley are always a joy. 

Full moon

As I said the other day, I had taken my camera along to the last meeting of my camera club, hoping to snap some cherry blossom. There was no blossom there but, as we left to go home, there was a rather lovely full moon. Unless you have the right lens, a tripod and other paraphernalia, moon shots are really pretty hopeless but I thought I'd give it a go nevertheless. This was taken with my new little camera, handheld. I liked the spookiness of the moon 'caught' in the tree branches, and the ghostly church tower on the left. Technical prowess = zero, atmospherics = a few points higher than zero! 

'And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years.'  Genesis 1:14

Easter

Despite (or perhaps because of) Easter being quite late this year, it has rather crept up on me and I have not done much planning. I suddenly realised the shops are shut - only for one day - but it did mean I had to dash out to top up with milk, fruit and veg! The churches are doing better (of course!) and St Paul's has its customary Easter Crosses in the churchyard. Some years the accompanying daffodils bloom in full splendour. This year they are a little past their best, but still bring a message of new life bursting through, which always seems appropriate for today, Easter Sunday. 

I feel I need reminding of this over and over again at the moment. Life goes on, despite so many tough things. 

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed, alleluia! 

Cherry blossom

The cherry blossom is coming into flower around Saltaire. Different trees seem to come into blossom at different times. On the last evening of our camera club season, I took my camera with me to photograph the blossom on the trees beside the path leading to the church. (We meet in a church hall.) In previous years it's been in bloom, but this year, not a single bud was out. Perhaps it's because Easter is late this year so we haven't needed a week's hiatus in the meeting programme. 

In contrast, the blossom on the trees around Saltaire's almshouses is looking blooming lovely. 

Product photography

I seem to be running low on photos for some reason, so I thought I'd post one I took recently at a practical evening at my camera club. We had a guest speaker called Haydn Bartlett, who is a professional food and product photographer. He showed us how he sets up and lights his work, and then we took it in turns to photograph the set-up. (So I can't take any credit at all for what is shown, since all I did was press the shutter button on my camera.) I'm not sure that practical events work all that well in a big club, as all that happens is you queue for your 'turn' and then have to hurry to take the photo. With more time and thought, I'd have got a better composition. I did, however, end up with a cheery and inviting picture of a bowl of soup. To be honest, it's more likely to encourage me to make some soup than to take more food photos. I adore making soup, there's something quite magical about turning a few odds and ends of left-over vegetables (that might otherwise get thrown away) into a comforting, warming, nutritious soup. It's a kind of alchemy. 

Field Locks

Walking east along the Leeds-Liverpool Canal beyond Shipley, as you draw near to Field Locks, there's this rather ugly bridge that connects the various parts of Esholt sewage works. (It did make quite an effective mono image!) The sewage works itself is a massive site belonging to Yorkshire Water, processing waste for both Bradford and Leeds. Originally developed in 1899, it finally freed our local streams and rivers from being open sewers (though the problem of sewage overspill into our rivers persists even now!) The water treatment site is so large that at one time it had its own internal railway, which perhaps explains this bridge. 

Field Locks, beyond, are a bit more attractive. It's a three-rise staircase lock, demanding a lot of concentration to navigate. There are helpful instruction boards but I gather people often get it wrong and cause floods and wasted water. In the summer there are often volunteer lock-keepers on duty to help novice boaters. 

Three locks need a lot of steps... all touchingly worn down by the thousands of feet that have tramped up and down over the 250+ years they've been there. 

The overflow channel (which probably has a proper name that I can't at the moment recall!) looked pretty with all the lesser celandines blooming on the banking. 

There are 91 locks in total on the Leeds-Liverpool Canal, with quite a few of them arranged as staircase locks like these. 

After all that excitement, it's a relief to cruise through the fresh spring greenery in Buck Wood.