HERE COME THE FLOWERS

There are two easy ways to make a nature blog look especially attractive.

1. Take photos only on sunny days.

2. If you have to take them in a mist, adjust them to make the scene look more cheerful than it really was when you were there.

The disadvantage (apart from giving a wrong impression, a misleading record and, therefore, in effect, lying) is that, when the sun and summer eventually come, it is hardly of note. The seasons meld and can even seem pointless.

* * *

I don't want to labour the bleakness of The Hamm (the causeway between Weymouth and Dorset on the South Coast of England) but it hasn't quite hit clear days yet!

24th March 2011 - Cold and hazy!

When the sky blazes blue in the summer and the sea does too; when the wind drops on land and the heat rises; when the air shimmers and flotillas of white sailed training boats tag across the harbour; when the arcs above kite surfers are bright with colour . . . it all feels completely different.

Chesil Beach - 24/03/11

Even then, it's still a bit odd. It's still not easy to remember that, once you climb to the top of that overpowering and horrifically dull pile of pebbles (or look down on it from the heights of Portland) . . .if you do that, you will see that this is one of the most beautiful places on earth. Indeed, it is so special, it is a World Heritage Site. It's on the same United Nations list as the Pyramids in Egypt, the Great Barrier Reef of Australia, Yellowstone National Park in the U.S.A.; the Taj Mahal, Venice, the Dolomite Mountains and the Great Wall of China.

Looking towards Portland.
Sometimes surfers hanging onto the kites
skim along the surface of the sea
faster than the cars on the road.

But, on Thursday last week (March 24th 2011) it was cold and hazy. Mist thinned the view. The kites of the wind surfers were almost colourless. 

Spring was, none the less, springing underfoot - and the nice thing about taking photographs close up is that there's hardly any mist to look through - so the white of the haze disappears and the sun, which is filtering through eye-level glare (when standing) is all that's left between us and the flowers.

As you can see, there used to
be a railway here.
The sycamore tree we are 'following'
is on a bank in a cutting
about a mile behind us but
on the same line.

When the weather warms, when the sun comes out with more confidence - I'll climb that bank of pebbles (over on the right and stretching into the distance) and show you the view.

BLEAK POST

There's a causeway running between Weymouth and the (almost) island of Portland on the south coast of England. It isn't a 'desert' in the technical sense of the word but it's not an easy place for plants.

Alongside it runs the back of Chesil Beach.

'Beach' is a confusing a word. Forget ice-cream and donkeys. Think a seventeen mile stretch of pebbles which starts from the west of here with little stones lying against the land. As the 'beach' runs east, the stones get bigger and little pools appear which gradually merge into a brackish lagoon defended from a raging sea by a massive rampart of smooth, flattish stones. At its eastern end, the water of the lagoon flows away, under a bridge, and the 'beach' swerves south to follow the causeway. Thousands and thousands of tonnes of pebbles  keep the sea from the road; from the flat, straight, grassy path of an old railway line and the calm of Portland Harbour.

'Harbour' is almost as misleading a word as 'beach'. This isn't a cosy place where fishing boats unload against a jetty or children drop crablines into the water - think 'sea' - with a wall crossing the horizon; it's a massive wall but it's so far away it looks small.

The stones along the
east side of the causeway
are interesting and irregular.

Imagine you are standing on a narrow stretch of land; two miles of stones and dryness and bitter winds and no houses. There are seabirds and windsurfers and a harsh white light and a road with no stopping places. It's hardly ever quiet.

When the wind isn't roaring, the cars and buses and lorries hum away irritatingly - unless one drops down over the edge of the bank to walk by the water - and there the noise drops.

I expect there is somewhere like it - but I have never been there!

At its start - an empty carpark sets the scene.

At its ending - a prison on a hill, an ex-naval base, a new marina, boat building factories and workshops and acres of land to keep boats out of the water, and a sailing academy which will be the base for the sailing events of the 2012 Olympics.

This is not going to be a tree post!

Plants, to survive here, need to be tough and low growing and their heads need flexible necks.

It's astonishing there are plants here at all. But there are - many of them specialists.

Soon, there will be flowers. Indeed, there are already some.

I'm not going to risk saying what these plants are just yet. (Well, there's a dandelion!) I'll add their names if and when I'm more certain.

Rather, I'm setting a scene so, when the spring gets further under way and the summer comes, if the wind doesn't shake everything about too much - you'll be able to appreciate what happens.

Hurray for Lichen!

P.S. One day, I'll post about Chesil Beach itself - but I'm waiting till the weather is warmer!

FROM SMALL SYCAMORE SEEDS . . .

Not a lot of change at the tree. The lesser celandines between its toes have been nibbled to their stalks. At the foot of the bank, the dip is dry. When rain comes it will be soggy. Sometimes it's a sluggish small stream. The patches of green down there are celandine leaves - not enough to impress though. Meanwhile, the bluebells on the left of the picture (hope they are bluebells! - time will tell) are bulking up.

March 8th 2011

February 9th 2011 - in colour!

The sky has changed. Not all the time - but when I took the latest pictures (8th March 2011) it was blue.

This is the view of the bank opposite, from beside the tree. The sky might be blue but the light is cold. (The shadow on the path is of the next tree along, not the one we are observing. It too is a sycamore.)

At my feet, a clump of moss; a marker so I know where to stand next time.

And on the moss, a sycamore seed. Already it has a root boring into the earth. With this anchored, it begins to wrench its head from the wing.

The parent trees remain leafless while their offspring need light for first shoots.

My breath is taken.

This post is for THE TREE YEAR, 2011