HOME IS WHERE WE KNOW

When we set off for our exploration of England and Scotland, I'd imagined I'd come home with lots of photographs of plants.

I didn't.

It rained. My, did it rain! You know the myth about people who live in snow-filled worlds having an almost infinite supply of words to describe the consistencies of snow? I now wish I had words for rain. Never previously have I realised how many kinds of rain there are. Some are beautiful. Some are as hackneyed as buckets of water thrown into the set of a B movie. But through all the kinds of rain we travelled, never did I find one which would make friends with my camera.

There were other disincentives too. Telling the people one is travelling with (Esther Montgomery and her family) to stop posing for holiday snaps and get out of the way of a leaf - isn't friendly. Nor is expecting them to wait while you crawl through the undergrowth. But these are not the only reasons for my empty handedness. Nor are they the most interesting. For I have learnt the value and importance of familiarity.

August 8th 2011

This is one wonderful landscapes we found ourselves walking in while we were away - part of the Goyt Valley in Derbyshire.

Fortuneswell (Dorset) Portland Harbour, Chesil Beach and The Ridgeway.

This is what I am used to.

Standing where I stood to take this photo, I am close to the Young Offenders' Prison, the stone quarries and the Old Railway Line I described in THIS post. The great bank of pebbles stretching into the distance (Chesil Beach) is pictured in THIS one. Most of the hedgerows featured in this blog are straight ahead. I live in an especially plant-rich environment - but people who live in the hills and the moors would say the same of the land around their homes - for they know what they are looking for.

If it hadn't rained so much, I would have learnt what to see. As it is - I re-learned the value of 'home'. Context is crucial. Familiarity opens our eyes.

August 8th 2011

This is the tent we travelled with - set up on Cold Springs Farm, right next to the Goyt Valley (pictured above).

Here are the plants we came home to.

The ripened sloes.

Little yellow daisy flowers. (The blue dots are the remains of Vipers Bugloss, still not quite over.)

The seed of Alexanders. (Which, to my embarrassment, I used to think belonged to Ground Elder.)

Brambles and willow herbs.

Seaweeds.

Fossils which emerge from the rocks, almost as I watch.

And the sea, the sea, the wonderful sea. It's the Isle of Portland, straight ahead. (I was standing on the highest point you can see here when I took the second photo of this post. If I had still been there, and had binoculars, I could have waved to myself.)

I'll show you more from our adventures as the weeks go by. But first, I celebrate 'home'.

(All local photographs were taken today, September 17th 2011.)

Esther's posted about one of the places we visited while we were away - Little Moreton Hall in Cheshire - HERE.

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SECOND STUCK-FOOT POST

The wind is whistling in the wires. Plants are shivering. They won't pose properly for photos. And I am longing for autumn. Soon, soon. I'm waiting for that particular smell which comes with it but I can't sense it yet, breathe in as I might.

Life is still busy. I haven't even opened all the envelopes that were waiting for me when I got back from our trip round England and Scotland. I haven't even looked through my photos - and that's saying something!

So . . . just time for another stuck-foot post.

If you didn't read the last one, it's where all the photos were taken from the same spot. Not only that, I put my foot down and didn't move it. It stayed 'stuck' in the same place all the time - even when it was awkward.

I was lucky for I was soon joined by this White Butterfly. I'm told (on good authority) it's a Green Veined White (Pieris napi) but, since I didn't notice any green veins . . . I'm feeling a bit wobbly about naming it.

I may not think it is autumn - but some plants seem definitely to be 'of the season'.

Others are simply dead - like this broken branch of gorse (Ulex europaeus). The rest of the bush is fine.

Scarlet Pimpernel (Anagallis arvensis) is a bright, end of summer delight.

And there too was this . . . whatever it is.

Are you stuck-footing yet?

(If you have a stuck foot post you'd like people to know about, leave a note in the comments and I'll put a link to it here.)

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