YOU'VE GOT TO SEE IT TO BELIEVE IT

Note the path. Important.
(The white line along the top of Chesil Beach is spray from the sea low down on the other side.)
This photo was taken March 1st 2015.

If you look into the sun you won't see anything. And if it's a hazy day and you look behind you, you won't see your shadow. And if the sun is in an inconvenient place - you won't be able to move it.

Such is life.

The path! See the path?
This is how it was on May 6th 2014

BUT. If you don't know what something is like now you may fail to realise how much it has changed when you reach the future. By then, you'll either have forgotten what was or be so overwhelmed by the present that you won't care any more.

I'm not being philosophical. It's a fact.

Last year I showed what the foot of Chesil Beach is like when thrift is in flower. I was also able to show you the context, how there are plants on the landward side of this huge, huge, long, long mound of pebbles, even though they fade out as you walk up and up till you see the sea down, down, down on the other side.

It was sunny on Sunday. But it was hazy too. And spray from the sea was misting the air where Chesil Beach meets land at Portland.

March 1st 2015

So even though masses of people had come out walking in this suddenly pleasant weather, it wasn't a good day for photographs. Which is a bit of a daft thing to say beside a picture dominated by a deep blue sky. But that's because I was looking in the other direction when I took it - away from the sun. A good principle! And at considerable distance from the cold sea spray. Another good idea when carrying a camera!

BUT (the point of the first BUT) if you don't see it now, you won't be as surprised as you will be when the thrift is out in May.

June 1st 2014.

I found it hard to decide. Should I provide you with an exceptionally boring post . . . ? Or shall I show you what will happen . . . ?  I was going to go with boring - but by the time the time the flowers come out you may have forgotten what it's like now. So . . . here we are with a now, compared with a then, which by previous years' experience will be what it will be in a couple of months' time. Miracles!

Here's another miracle. It's cold. It's not summer. But looking straight into the sky - larks would you say? (They kept flying overhead - except they stopped when I pointed the camera into the air and came back when I pressed the 'end of video' button. Never mind. You can hear them. Promises of summer.)

(I don't know how YouTube works but when I listened to this the larks suddenly gave way to a woman explaining how to make Christmas cake - which was a bit abrupt and disconcerting. So beware of seasonal and contributor muddle!)

Then we turn round and cross the road. Portland Harbour (over the bank) is a great place for sailing and kite surfing. Here it is now.

The grass is a bit drier than it looks in this picture.
March 1st 2014

Here is the 'now' 

May 14th 2014

and here is the 'will be'.











Shall we make a date for May?

(All 'then' pictures are taken from the post 'Thrift on Chesil Beach' from June 2nd 2014.)

* * *

But first: The Tree Following Link box opens at 7am on 7th March and closes on the 14th. (UK time.) See you there!

Tweet

THRIFT ON CHESIL BEACH

Sea Beet  (Beta vulgaris subsp. maritima) (I think!)
The white flowers beside it are Sea Campion. (Silene uniflora)

June 1st 2014

Let me first remind you of the context.

(We began this exploration in the last post - Nothing But Stones.)

A sea of stones between sea-and sea.

Where somehow, some plants grow.

Not many. And only on the lower levels. But they do grow.

This Sea Beet plant plant in the picture above is about two feet across.

The focus of this post though is Thrift (Armeria maritima).

Thrift - Ameria maritima. June 1st 2-14

In the foreground, Thrift. Further back - green patches where plants also grow. These in the picture are several feet across but some little islands of green are only twelve inches. Even in these small circles there are Thrift flowers in May.

For an idea of scale - the dots are people climbing to the top of the beach.

A sea of Thrift with the cliffs of Portland beyond. May 6th 2014

In the winter months of early 2014, this part of the world was specially storm tossed. Not only did great waves come over the top of the beach but tides came up higher than usual. The road that runs beside this part of Chesil Beach had to be closed from time to time because it was flooded.



The extraordinaryness of this is hard to explain if you've never been here. And if you have . . . it is probably even harder to understand. For when you see where the sea is meant to be, it is . . . well it's terribly hard to believe that it can have come so far over its usual bounds. But come it did - up and over from one side and in on the tide from the other. So, to my mind, it's not only extraordinary that Thrift can make a mat for itself (along with other sea plants . . . and the odd dandelion that gets in on the act) and grow among pebbles, it's astonishing that it can make such an incredible display where everything has been thoroughly salt-soaked and under water.

May 6th 2014

Here is an individual flower. For those of you who have not met Thrift in person - they look very much like chive flowers. They stand five or six inches high. Their leaves are a mat of spikes; barely distinguishable from mown or cropped grass.

May 12th 2014

This incredible flowering began in late April and has continued right through May.

Now we are at the beginning of June the great expanse of colour has gone, even though there are still many blooms.

Spent Thrift. June 1st 2014.
(Ignore the green furry thing on the left. That's something else.)

But even dying flowers are lovely. And soon there will be seeds.

These Thrift flowers were growing on the other side of the road - next to Portland Harbour.
The ground there is dry, hard earth rather than pebbles. May 14th 2014

Then, next year. It will all happen again. (Though 2014 has, I think, been a specially spectacular year.)

Notes.

Here is the RHS page about Thrift. The description there suggests Thrift will grow almost anywhere - but . . . does it?

If you look at the top left hand side of the picture with the cliffs of Portland, you'll see a cluster of white buildings. This video clip from February shows the sea coming over the beach where they are. (At the very beginning of the clip. After that it's beer barrels and things floating around in the flood.)

Our World Tuesday

Tweet

NOTHING BUT STONES

I am going to take you to a bleak and beautiful place. A place where nothing grows. A place of stones.

In this post you will see little else. A van on a road and, beyond it - stones.

You will see no plants in this post - only stones.

There are no insects - only stones.

These stones (or, rather, pebbles - because they are smooth and rounded and you won't hurt yourself if you fall) go on seemingly for ever - up and up, then for two miles one way (if you walked left out of picture) and around fifteen in the other.

You can change the seeming height in photographs. Often the flowers and insects I show you appear on your screen massively larger than they are in real life. It has to be like that - otherwise you wouldn't see them! But in this post, I have the opposite problem. There is no way I can express in pictures how high this bank of stones is, nor how it seems when you stand on top and see it curve into the mist of distance.

Where we are now - towards the eastern end, a couple of miles before they join land at Portland, the pebbles are oval and about three inches long. At the western end, where they join the mainland, they are like gravel. The sea, it seems, sifts them. And for much of its way, there is water on either side. Sea on the south. A lagoon called the Fleet on its other side which separates it from the coast of Dorset.

Almost at the top - and you begin to see the sea on the other side.

Photographs of Chesil Beach tend to show it from above - from the top of the Island of Portland - so you can see the sweep of it, the roofs of houses leading down to it. This gives it a Mediterranean feel. But when you are walking along the road beside it, along the two mile causeway between Weymouth and Portland, it feels very industrial. But it isn't. This is nature.

This is looking down to the sea from the top. Again, height is difficult to express.
The waves are a long way down.
They are not as high as they are sometimes but they are bigger than they look.
Between us and them there are huge ripples in the arrangement of pebbles.
They go down in stages so you have to go down and up and down and up
before you get to the sea - except its best not to get close.
The beach shelves. There's a strong undertow. Get in and you might not get out.
There may be fishermen with rods and long lines but
there are no swimmers!

Of course there are plants here, if only in its lower reaches; otherwise I wouldn't be talking about it on Loose and Leafy! But before we look at the dramatic flowering which happens each year in May I want you to grasp the context. Outside the towns of England, we are used to 'green and pleasant'. Even in towns there are trees. There are pebble beaches along some of our shores; dramatic cliffs too. But there's nothing like this - not on this scale. Which is why it's a World Heritage site.

Back to the causeway road. On the other side strong winds are
appreciated by kite surfers who race alongside it in Portland Harbour.

In the next post - I'll let you see the flowers!

Tweet