Tag Archives: countryside
Rural Portrait: Cow Parsley Profusion
So much vegetation, I was hard pressed to find the footpath!
Rural Wallpaper: The Scent of a Hampshire Spring
This was shot with an early Olympus digital camera from 2001. Not bad, huh? This is what it might look like on your computer…
And here’s a charming picture of your intrepid photographer out and about…
…combining two activities that brings pleasure to his tedious existence. Actually it isn’t that tedious: I think I’m really rather fortunate.
Carnage at the Castle
When I decided to lengthen and widen the entrance to my Fantic’s bike-port (or lean-to, as it’s probably described more accurately)…
…it became necessary to re-locate the hedge-hog house…
…as mentioned in these earlier blogs 1 and 2. I was concerned that the occupants might have been disturbed by the ‘building’s’ uprooting, so set up a camera to check out the scene, so to speak. I needn’t have been worried; life clearly carried on as normal…
Hey, doesn’t this next mouse look rather like the Plastic Annihilator?
Whatever, once the task was complete (and having surveyed the rest of the garden) I found myself surplus one box-like flower pot that had been split open by repeated winter freezing. So I up-ended it and created a mouse ‘castle’…
Well a ‘ruin’ anyway. Naturally I tossed a few seeds, fat pellets, and what-have-you inside it; set up a camera; and awaited developments. Due, probably to a sudden downpour, the first to arrive were some small black slugs…
But before long the Plastic Annihilator and his buddy – we’ll call it Brian – joined the feast…
PA and Brian remained for some while, before being supplanted by a late-coming vole of some kind…
Vole didn’t stay long, because minutes later an unexpected caller…er… called…
Yeah…I do have an incumbent hedgehog afterall. Hoorah!
Oh, but what of the small black slugs?
Gobbled up and polished off, that’s what. Carnage at the Castle!
Portrait of Spring: Sheltered Beneath a Wall
Rural Wallpaper: Chill December
Bare trees, frosted roofs, and gently smoking chimneys. Rural England in Wintertime.
Portrait of Nature: The Woodland Path
Rural Wallpaper: Country Counter Top
Nature Wallpaper: When Catkins Start Their Dangling…
…it’s for Spring that we’re all angling!
Portrait of Nature: Last Year’s Left-Overs
Autumn seems to have hung on all through winter.
Portrait of Nature: Perfect Winter Morning
Nature Wallpaper: Cruel Thorns; Hard Frost
Myriad Sparrows live within this hedgerow. How do they survive the barbs? Or is it a case of the thorns offering the tiny birds protection from predators? They certainly squawk a lot. But I guess I would too – if I had those things jabbing me up the arse every five minutes!
P.S Don’t you think those three bramble leaves look rather predatory?
Nature Wallpaper: Grass Cropped Short (With Icicles)
Grass cropped short by sheep. The icicles are obviously the work of global warming. Facetious comment courtesy of Tooty Nolan.
Nature Wallpaper: Green, Green, and More Green!
…with a touch of brown.
Rural Wallpaper: Shit, and the Means to Spread It.
Though not on this particular day: the cowshed effluent was frozen solid.
P.S I pride myself with choosing quality subjects. It’s so important.
A Matter of Form Over Function
On such a lovely sunny day, and with the icy roads thawing quickly, I thought the time was ripe to pull my Fantic Caballero from it’s hutch. And indeed it was; a fun journey ensued that lifted my spirits. But after the twenty-mile ride had concluded, I found my boots somewhat soiled…
…and the bike an absolute disaster…
This was due entirely to a front fender that had been designed for pleasing aesthetics: not warding off road crap…
I spent the first fifteen minutes of the rest of my life hosing the bike down. So, it seems, from now on I’ll have to choose my riding conditons more carefully – like when the roads are entirely dry…
However does anyone really care when the machine looks as good as this? It’s referred to as an urban chic street scrambler: but I think it looks kind of groovy in a rural environment. Oh if only they could keep the roads clean!
Nature Wallpaper: Morning Fresh
Rural Portrait: Perfectly Imperfect
Rural Wallpaper: Cold Conversation
Nature Portrait: Brambles Succumb to Winter
Nature Wallpaper: First Frosty Morning of Autumn
I always carry a camera when I’m out and about on my motorcycle. I don’t want to miss stuff like this…
Nature Wallpaper: Through a Rain-Smeared Window
Another brief squall, just as the sun breaks through…
Where is the Back-Lane Behemoth?
Understandably, when people learn that I have obtained this…
…they assume that I swapped in the Back-Lane Behemoth as part exchange for something lighter, more manageable, and better suited to the predominantly rural type of riding I do. I mean, why would a retired gent, such as I, require one motorcycle – let alone two? But they would assume wrong – on both counts. One: why wouldn’t a retired gent want two – utterly disparate, chalk and cheese – motorcycles? Two: Nah, look, there it is…
After all, why would I want to deny myself this?
Nature Wallpaper: Remnant of Summer
The drought of 2022 in the UK effected the natural world in several ways – all of them negatively. But when a cold snap followed it’s watery ending, and subsequent seasonal temperatures soared shortly afterwards, the natural world was thrown out of kilter. For some plants, it appeared that summer had returned. For others the period called winter was skipped, and they went straight to Spring again. All very colourful for those who took the time to look. Who knows what will become of the Primroses etc when winter finally arrives – not to mention dumb-ass hedgehogs. It probably won’t go well for them. Here ‘s a shot of high-summer Clover in Autumn, which was lovely to see amongst all the dry brown hedgerow foliage and fresh green shoots emerging from the desiccated grasses at the field’s edge…
Wallpaper 645: Sudden Cessation of Autumn’s Calm
Out of nowhere…
If nothing else, British weather is unpredictable – especially when, like me, you live in a valley and can’t see it coming.
Has ‘Helping the Hedgehog’ Helped?
Well if the following picture is to be believed, someone has clearly moved into the Hedgehog Over-Wintering House at the bottom of my garden. Look, they’ve planted a nice flower outside the porch…
But since no one responded to a polite knock, I thought it best to spy on them – by installing a night-vision camera, I’m sorry to say, t’was not a spiky critter that emerged into the darkness; but one of these…
Oh, well, at least the property isn’t laying vacant. Some smart little rodent has spotted the potential. There, I told you hedgehogs were dumb-asses!
Helping The Hedgehog
When I was a young man. I would often dismount from my motorcycle to aid a hedgehog across the rural road down which I was returning home, before he or she got himself or herself flattened by nocturnal traffic. In those days Britain was awash with the little spiky critters. But, as the decades passed, car numbers increased, hedgehog territories reduced, and with predator numbers increasing, it meant that times were difficult for Erinaceus Europaeus. In fact, it was a full eight years after I moved back into the country, before I saw one – and then only the once. Then, during the drought of 2022, I heard my dogs going bananas in the back garden. Upon investigation I discovered a rather pissed-off ball of spikes blinking in the light of my torch. Naturally I chased the dogs off and gave it a slice of ham. My garden then became part of the hedgehog’s territory, and it returned every night from then on. A while later, whilst channel surfing, I chanced upon a small segment on a local news program concerning the less-than-common hedgehog. Because of their decreasing numbers, the ‘Expert’ was imploring people to help them by supplying water during dry times (doing that already, thank you) and building overwintering habitats for their resident animal. “Ah-ha,” cried I, “time to get the tool box out: it’s ‘project’ time!”
Two days later…
How could ‘my’ hedgehog not give this more than a passing glance?
Inside, beyond the porch, and behind the hay, there is a vestibule – an inner wall to deflect the winter winds. Beyond that is the hibernation chamber, which comprises three layers of insulation – wood, corrugated plastic, and finally waterproof roofing felt – all kept from the wet or frozen ground by a metal frame, and topped with a plastic roof made from the floor of a dog cage. How can it resist? But if it does – coz they are kinda dumb-asses – I’m confident the mice, voles, or whatever will find a cozy home there.
Wallpaper 641: Weather In-Bound
I had the dogs with me. Neither have any sense of urgency. We made it home in the nick of time.
Wallpaper 640: Greeting September’s Last Sunrise
Nature Wallpaper: Weeks Into the Drought
The fields near where I live suffered during the Summer of 2022. They also made a pleasant, if slightly abnormal wallpaper…
Here’s how it might appear on your computer…
And just to show you the lengths I’m willing to go to in order to serve up these wonders of nature – regard what a loop of vicious bramble did to me as I went about my country business, snapping nice pictures to share with all…
My ankle was like that all the way around. I hate bastard brambles!
Summer Wallpaper: Dusty Dusk
Rural Wallpaper: Kings of the Castle
A herd of young cattle were released into a field that had lain fallow for two years. Four cows made for a pile of soil that had been dumped there. Who knows why. Maybe to see over the hedge? Or did they have loftier ambitions? Kings of the castle…
Nature Wallpaper: State of Alert
PS. I awoke to discover that this had become another ‘hit’ for me on Flickr. Obviously I was pleased.
Rural Wallpaper: Kicking Up the Dust
Nature Wallpaper: Sharing
Before I share my ‘Sharing’ wallpaper with you, please allow me to share the following image with you…
I suffer for my art, you know. Despite the fields and paths of rural England appearing benificent, don’t be fooled. For all the waving grasses and spirited swathes of clover, there are always brambles laying in wait amongst them for unwary picture-snappers like me. Bastards.
So, anyway, on to the subject of this post. I put this picture up on my Flickr page. In the first 36 hours it received about a hundred hits and a couple of ‘faves’. Then, whilst I slept blissfuly, trying to ignore my itching shins, the picture went ape-shit. By the time I posted this version of the picture here, the original had already gained over 3700 hits and a hundred ‘faves’. Someone likes it. I hope you do. It is quite nice…
Tooty Nolan: Languishing Somewhere Between Clever and Stupid 