Kahlil Gabran’s likening of trees to poems 'that the earth writes upon the sky' is often quoted, I know. And yes, the branches of trees, their twigs and leaves, do seem a little like writing against the sky. But there is more to this poem.
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This year our dreary spring has continued into this, one of my favourite months, with only a few brighter days. We did have one glorious weekend in the middle of the month, with temperatures more like summer than spring. But we also had more grey days and more wet ones.
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Who doesn’t love flowers? Very few people indeed, I am sure. And by extension, who doesn’t love a flower photo? Of course, no photo can fully convey the beauty, and no scents were ever appreciated through an image.
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I can remember a time when wildflowers were always just that, wild. They grew randomly in places where they had self-seeded, in hedgerows or on verges. In towns they were too often seen as weeds, not part of the gardener’s plans. If we were lucky they might pop up in odd corners of our urban concrete jungles, softening them and giving us a lift whenever we spotted them.
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While not exactly stormy, spring this year has definitely been wet and quite often cooler than normal. Yes, there have been odd days when it felt like winter was well behind us, with warm sunshine giving us all a lift. But within a couple of days the clouds had descended, the thermometer dropped, and the rain returned.
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A bonus I didn’t expect when joining a local photography group was that one of the members would own a patch of woodland. A wood that at the moment is full not of picnicking bears but of bluebells and other early spring flowers.
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I’ve had several exchanges of comments with blogger friends about the merits or otherwise of editing flower shots in monochrome. Some, like me, find the textures and shapes attractive, while others bemoan the loss of colour.
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English can be a strange language. I know I would hate to have to learn it! The pronunciation of many of our words seems illogical and inconsistent (think of tough / bough / through / though / cough). And we have so many words with multiple meanings.
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In his poem 'To Autumn' John Keats describes the autumn we all know and love, with lingering warm weather and bountiful harvests. But he also celebrates later autumn days, when winter seems just over the horizon. Both have their beauty.
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In the early nineteenth century the Reverend John Beresford, Baron Decies, decided to turn a swampy area of ground on his estate into an attractive landscape with a lake and woodlands. Many landowners were carrying out similar improvements but perhaps more unusually the Reverend was acting out of philanthropy.
