Yellow sea

Seas of yellow Rapeseed lap the woodland fringes that contain them, the wheel's turning through it's yellow period as the land reflects the brightness of Bel's ascendancy. 

The Comma

Spring returned this morning and with it the warming sun. Not bothered by my attention, a Comma butterfly (Polygonia c-album) suns itself on a trunk in the sunlit tranquillity of White's plantation. It's said that the ancient Celts saw butterflies as the souls of the dead, with the ability to travel between this and the otherworld. A beautifully romantic image for a people we usually see as quite macho and fighty.

White's plantation

We followed the green lane which leads towards Beckley and the edge of the New Forest this morning, past White's and Hobbs plantations. It's been a long while since I walked this way.  The old green lane was always sunken and prone to water logging, over the years it's condition deteriorated to the point where it was often impassible, now where necessary the lane is sited a couple of meters to one side, on higher drier ground and the ditches on the remaining low section kept well maintained. It's lovely walking, proper rural, and in the current climate near devoid of the sounds of man, a different world. I laid down, closed my eyes, breathed deeply and escaped into it...glorious. 

Bullace

Wandering along Dark Lane this morning with Geoff I was struck by how laden with fruit the hedgerow shrubs are, Sloe, Haw, Hazel, Oak, all are weighed down with ripening produce.  A nice surprise was to find a few good sized Bullace (Prunus insititia) shrubs also well laden with fruits. It got me thinking, just imagine if as a society we embarked on a massive program of hedge laying, of creating miles of hedges. Imagine the quantities of fruits and nuts we could harvest in a good year, not to mention the creation of valuable wildlife habitats and in light of the climate crisis, the carbon sinks we'd establish. If only we thought outside of our self constructed box, nature offers simple solutions to humanities complex problems.