Category: Newton Wood
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Peacock on a Bluebell
After a few false starts, finally a vernal freshness to the morning. The bluebells are out in Newton woods but a week or so off their best. The more astute of you may have noticed an increase in the posting of telephoto photos. My new toy. Normal service will be resumed when the novelty wears…
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Snow, bracken and bluebells
Beneath the wet, dirty snow, beneath last year’s carpet of dead bracken, the bluebells remind us that spring is on its way. Open Space Web-Map builder Code
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Spring has sprung
The first day of Spring. Meteorologically speaking. The 1st of March. An arbitrary date that the Met Office has declared for their statistics. More snow overnight with strong winds. Yet in a sheltered hollow of Newton Wood, a snow-encrusted oak sapling with a stubborn leaf still clinging on. An appropriate poem for this day by…
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First snowdrop of the year
I saw my first Snowdrop today. In the wild that is, I had noticed some in the garden last weekend. This one was under the canopy the shade of an oak tree in what will be in a few months time a bracken-covered glade in Newton Wood at an altitude 200m asl. I suspect it’s…
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Damaged walkway in Newton Wood
Who did this then? A 500kg horse maybe?
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The Bluebell Meadow, Newton Wood
Not very blue in Autumn. Compare with a photo I took almost from the same spot a year and six months ago. The blues of May have been replaced by the golden hues of Autumn. Meanwhile we drift into the month of November. The word has a Latin root, novem or nine, for in the calendar of…
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The best thing about Pteridium aquilinum …
… is when it’s dying off. Bracken, carcinogenic, toxic to livestock, invasive and dominating, smothering the growth of other plants. At the height of the summer it forms an impenetrable undergrowth. Yet the autumn bracken changes to rich yellow hues. Super even on a drizzly morning.
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Newton Woods
A day spent working with the National Trust to carry out repairs to the steps on the main tourist route up Roseberry through Newton Woods. Two tonnes of hardcore hand carried up in buckets to make good the treads which had sunk due to compaction. 28 done, only 170 to go.
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Newton Moor
Back home on my home moors and I’m saddened to find the remains of a campfire on Newton Moor which is at the remotest part of the National Trust’s Roseberry Topping property. What makes it even more depressing is that the wooden post to which this sign was fixed has been used for fuel.
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Horse Tails
Horse Tails has been described as a living fossil. It is the only surviving member of the class of plants known as Equisetopsida which dominated the forests 360 million years ago during the Carboniferous period. At a time when the dinosaurs still had to evolve Equisetopsida for 100 million years grew up to a height of 30m during which our coal…