Saturday 15 May 2010 - Local beauty

This afternoon I wandered down lanes near my house. The sun was shining and I put the roof down on the car and drove slowly, very slowly, looking at everything.

Often as I went round a corner a bright yellow field of oil seed rape shone at me and I had to stop and take a photo.

I couldn't resist the curves on the edges of the field in this photo, it really brightened up my afternoon.

The trees are all clothed in different colours of yellow and green and the light shining through the leaves is wonderful.  I can never decide which I like best, the skeletons of trees in the winter landscape, the hints of green and yellow on the twigs in the spring, the lush leaves of summer or the yellow, rusts and reds of autumn.  I love the look of the bark on this tree and of its leaves against the sky.

  

 Further along the lanes there were plantations of trees along the roadside and I found the patterns fascinating.

The next photographs were of plants in the grass alongside the lanes.  I love the colour of the honesty flowers but can't wait for the "penny" seed pods which come later, and I love the dandelion seedheads which are covering the fields here.

These irises are such an incredible blue and they've only just uncrumpled from their bud stage.

There are new calves of various ages in so many of the fields near to me, and this is one little calf I couldn't resist.

  

There are hundreds of streams, rivers and lakes in Brittany.  I love water and here you can never be far from it.  Today I stopped at a bridge across the lane I was travelling over and took the photographs below.  The first is of the rippled water and the second, which looks like shot silk material is of weed flowing in the current of the water.

Three Beautiful Things:

1.   Drinking ice cold water with my chocolate bar.

2.   Watching my three week old chicks trying to fly a little.

3.   Picking parsley from a full to bursting 3ft x 3ft greenhouse bed which originally all came out of a small supermarket herb pot.