Whilst I work on the ribbon rosebud tutorial to post shortly, I thought I’d post some of the photographs taken on our recent trip to the English Lake District, as I’d been enjoying looking through them and reminiscing this afternoon. Sometimes photographs in themselves are not of portfolio quality, but it is the story behind them that is the interest. All of these photographs were taken with a compact camera, as we were concentrating on some quality walking this holiday – as somewhat rarely we actually had the weather for it too – so I didn’t routinely carry my DSLR. The photographs have been post-processed to taste.

The Lake District is a place we love very much and despite spending every possible moment there, have never tired of. We’ve often said that we’d like to win the lottery and escape there to be walking and photography bums – we often speculate just how much of it we could stand before we’d get bored of it. I suspect it might be quite a long time and I’d really love the opportunity to thoroughly test that. We’d take such a task very seriously and give it our full efforts.

So Mr Boo bought a lottery ticket tonight with a view to funding our ideal lifestyle and we did indeed have a rare win. Unfortunately it will only be enough to buy afternoon tea or a couple of ice creams, not come even close to buying any of the very, very expensive houses we’ve already shortlisted.

One of the places we love, just on the extremity of the Lakes and looking towards them and not far from where we stay, is the coastal town of Arnside. It has the air of a place that time has left thankfully largely unspoiled. It has a very tranquil and unhurried feel and we love to visit there, especially when it’s bracing and you can walk along the beach or adjacent pathways and let the sea air blow away the cobwebs. We often try to time our visits with a suitable meal time to avail ourselves of the wares of the local chippy or when the tide is coming in. Arnside has a flood tide, or bore. As bores go, it’s a modest one – but still very worth seeing. There always seem to be good sunsets here too.

This photograph was taken during an evening flood tide and you can see the water progressing just past this boat – within 2 or 3 minutes it was totally floating.

A classical example of a photograph that fell somewhat short of expectations. I was trying to catch this delicate seaside Thrift at the front of the frame, in focus, at eye level with the scenery in the background. But short of lying on the rocks, I had to improvise with the self-timer and this was the best I managed – the rock I selected clearly wasn’t as level as I’d thought!

This was an odd and rather poignant scene. We’d stopped at a bench for a snack during a walk around Grasmere and I could see a crow in the edge of the water nearby eating something – he was having a substantial feed. I watched for a while through binoculars, trying to fathom out what he was eating, expecting it to be some of a walker’s discarded packed lunch. It became evident that it was the carcass of a mallard duck. As I watched, a mother duck with 3 medium sized and still downy youngsters approached and she spotted the body in the water.

She was clearly distressed by it. She’d continue on her way, then return for another look. Maybe she thought it was one of her offspring – as ducks have large broods and with only 3 remaining, she’d clearly already lost some. It was an adult duck, but it obviously troubled her, which was rather poignant – ducks clearly have feelings too.

A holiday is simply not complete until you’ve both eaten ice cream and fed ducks (and even after 30 years of training, Mr Boo still doesn’t fully grasp the concept of keeping bread past its best for just such purposes) – and this particular holiday we saw a lot of ducklings, so feeding them is compulsory. It’s the law! Fact.

Talking of wildlife – this is something that especially interests me, both as a photographic subject and just to enjoy for my own amusement. We have various spots where we regularly see deer or other favourites. I didn’t do that well on this trip, but at the very spot where we’ve seen deer before, we just spotted two youngsters amongst the trees.

At the place we stay we have a bird table outside the window and often see mice on the ground beneath, gathering morsels that fall and taking them off to their larder. We watched this particular chap making several runs to the table from a nearby reed patch – always running the same route and pausing at the edge of the reeds to check the coast was clear before dashing over to the table.

I only managed this one snatched photograph with my compact camera, as he moved so very fast and seemed to prefer running his food sorties each morning when I was in the shower – never appearing even once when I had the right gear set up for the task. I didn’t think it had the ears of a mouse, so on consultation with wildlife books it looks like it was a short tailed vole or field vole. Mr Boo established the lack of a long tail on a later visit – I believe that a long tail would have made it a bank vole.

We are currently undergoing a hose-pipe ban in the north west of England after the driest start to a year since records began – reservoirs close to us at home are the emptiest I’ve seen them for many years and this is also true of Thirlmere in the Lakes. I can’t actually recall seeing the level so low before – it must be 20 or 30 feet below its usual level.

Areas around lakes and reservoirs are often also used to grow timber crops and you’ll often come across areas once filled with dense woodland laid bare after felling. At first this looks quite alarming, to see it barren and devoid of woodland, but nature soon rectifies that and abundant life bursts forth in short order. You need to view it from close quarters to fully appreciate the diversity of life it quickly supports. The newly planted trees grow rapidly and it only looks bare for a handful of years.

In recent times, the managing of such landscapes seems to have changed, where in the past all of the dead timber would be cleared totally, they now leave smaller branches, fallen trees and scrub behind as an ecosystem in its own right. One of the nature walks we took, was part through cleared woodland and part through dense forest and it was fascinating to see the diversity of plants and insects thriving together on the cleared sections. One feature of cleared forestation is the way foxgloves (digitalis) colonise it and this year in particular, they were especially vibrant and abundant.

I’ll finish with some photographs of some of our favourite walks. Trees are very important to me and I feel most comfortable amongst them and love walks that take me through woodland – I especially love to see dappled sunlight through trees and thankfully, this holiday, we saw that more often than we usually experience it. I just cannot conceive of living anywhere without being surrounded by trees – and preferably some lakes or rivers too. The last couple of photographs are plant close ups – I’m always fascinated by the amazing geometry that occurs in nature.

Alternative title: gratuitous opportunity to post some photos I took at the weekend.

I love this time of year. I love autumn too. But I find spring to be inspiring and energising and it fills you with a mood of optimism.

Please click on any of the photographs to see a larger view, they tend to look rather dark here on the page.

The earth, awoken by lengthening days and increasing temperatures, puts forth new life at an alarming rate. The world around us positively explodes with new growth, in a green the most vibrant we will see all year. It’s never quite as fabulous as it is when spring gravitates towards summer.

Ferns and brackens unravel themselves like something other-worldly.

I love the things that grow at this time of year, I love the climate and I love that sense of promise of longer days and warm evenings watering the garden. I love that I can work outside or at least with the door open. I love being able to get my washing out on the line and to eating breakfast in the garden. I love opening the curtains in a morning to sunshine and bird song.

Although I don’t much like warm weather, which is why I think I’m most happy and comfortable in spring and autumn, the temperatures suit me rather better.

Tiny delicate Speedwells emerge through the leaf litter in woodland. There seemed to be two different species growing beside each other. One a vibrant violet blue and the others had a smaller mauve flower with more distinct stripes. Both are gorgeous.

I love to look at the little things that emerge from the earth, before they are dominated by longer grass and stronger plants. Those delicate little flowers that have adapted to emerge first, to fulfill their cycle before their dominating earth-mates overshadow them.

We just spent the bank holiday weekend in the Lake District. To me, getting away and walking through woodland particularly, is an absolutely vital way I must spend time periodically. I just don’t think I could survive life’s demands without communing closely with trees every week or two. It’s an activity that takes a high priority in my planning and for the scant money we have available. Some people like to eat in restaurants or go to bars – to me, there is no restaurant in the world that I would enjoy as much as eating bread and cheese under trees. It’s a bonus when it’s not actually raining.

One particular favourite path we walk often takes us past this massive beech tree – it’s stunning, in different ways, at different times of the year. This weekend it was just coming into full foliage – bright glossy green leaves at their peak of perfection, before being ravaged by weather and insects. It is slightly raised from the road, so that you initially view its roots at eye level and due to its commanding size, has a large clear area around it, strewn with mossy rocks.

At least, that’s how it looks at first glance. But the bare-looking ground beneath, is in anything but. On closer inspection, it is a positive cornucopia of emerging growth and subtle variety. There must be dozens of species of plant growing in that particular environment of cool and shade beneath its protective spread. There are a multitude of tiny beech trees that have germinated from its own masts, even some small bright green new pine trees, violets, digitalis, mosses and grasses. The photograph below represents about a square meter of ground from the bottom left corner of the wider shot above. I am sure to return many times this year, so will be interested to repeat this process and record how that little patch develops.

I’ve prepared this photo rather larger than usual and sharpened it quite hard so that you can see the detail. Please click to see the large version.

And you couldn’t possibly consider the beauty of spring without mentioning bluebells. I have more bluebell photos to come, from another camera, but for now, these are two ways I love to see bluebells, in a fabulous fragrant carpet over moorland, these from an area above Coniston that I must check the map to get the correct name for. They looked mauve looking upwards and more blue when viewed from above looking down the hill – must be the way the light spectrum was reflected from the petals.

And I love to see them like this too – just dotted amongst emerging woodland growth, at the base of trees and amongst fallen timber – more subtle and delicate – but perhaps their colour is all the more highlighted and vibrant because of it.

Design is a funny business. As I’ve written about before, finished designs come about through all manner of routes. Some designs take form through the determination to achieve a particular result or overcome a problem, some just happen because that is where the metal takes you, some pieces end up the way they do because something either went wrong, or didn’t work as expected and you’re making the best of the change in direction.

Sometimes I simply dream the making of the design (I have one such piece in progress and will blog about it when finished) or I wake up with it fully formed after my subconscious has toiled away on a thorny problem, from the previous day, whilst I slept.

Further to my earlier blog about working extensively with copper, I took the idea of bracelet links I made at that time and made similar links into earrings.

Please click on any of the photographs to see a larger view.

But one phenomena that does happen for me on a regular basis is the branching out of ideas from one initial thought. You start off working a piece – either on paper, or actually with materials – and as you’re working, either another idea occurs to you from the shapes before you, or you change direction from your original idea. I have the mental picture that ideas reside in the shape of a tree – some branches become dead ends and never bear fruit, others keep growing and changing direction – growing to overlap other ideas and sometimes merging.

My figure of 8 links merged with last weeks spiral links in this antiqued copper bracelet. I’d vowed in an earlier blog that I would spend all day Tuesday locked into making things and I did indeed manage that and this was one of the results – although this was not one of the ideas in my head when I switched the light on above my workbench.

I often find that I therefore work in very particular periods of closely associated themes and I very much doubt that I am alone in this. This can arise where the mind gets locked into an idea and others just flow from it, or from a more practical perspective, once you get set up for a particular technique, it’s easier to make more of the same, or similar, at the same time. I also often find that it takes a few copies of a component before I get the measurements and technique just right and once I have and am on a roll, it’s worth making a few of the same thing once the creative rhythm is established.

My commission necklace had required spiral wrapped beads too, so whilst working them, I used the same technique in this bracelet, inter-spaced with coiled copper links, I’d also used in another commission design. I’d initially tried with a larger gauge of wire, but they came out far too big for the bracelet, but made a good basis for a pair of earrings, featuring lovely spring green serpentine jade ovals:

Earrings to match the bracelet above.

This is just how it was this week. I received a commission for a necklace and earring set based on a design I’d not made for some time – and in a period before I made such meticulous notes on techniques, tools used and measurements, to make returning to past-worked designs that bit easier.

So I had to set about working out how I’d previously made the figure of 8 links at the core of the design – and having done so and got into a rhythm and consequently consistent in my workmanship – I made more than needed and worked these into some brand new pieces – and I’m nowhere near done yet, I still have more ideas in mind to work on – just from one innocuous little hammered figure of 8 link.

I even found myself working it together with the spiral links I’d got locked into last week – the two were of a weight and texture that co-ordinated well, so some pieces show two themes merged into something new.

The antiqued copper bracelet shown was worked entirely from the one gauge of raw copper wire, as shown.

For me, a banana has a very narrow window of perfect ripeness for eating. Under-ripe and they’re shiny and not a good taste – over-ripe and they’re soft and have a tendency to cause indigestion. I suspect, for me at least, the window of banana perfection is only about 24 hours or so. But when you get it right, they’re just fabulous.

So looking at the handful of large bananas on the kitchen windowsill, I was sure that window had passed. But I hate waste, so wondered what I could cook with them in – cake was the most obvious answer, but I can’t think that I’ve ever made a banana cake before.

As a diabetic, I don’t bake very often, only usually if entertaining other people and consequently, I don’t keep much in the way of supplies on hand – in fact my usual practice is to stock up on sugar and a cheap margarine tub that will freeze, before Christmas and very often this lasts most of the year – I perhaps buy 3 bags of sugar a year – and two of those will be dark ones for rum butter and the like for the festivities.

Please click the photo for a larger view.
Shame I can’t blog the smell for you.

So I was going to have to find a recipe with a minimal ingredient list and not taking long to prepare. Inspection of the fridge and cupboards found 3 eggs with a ‘use by’ date that has passed at the beginning of the week, an open bag each of pecans and brazil nuts and some raisins – those I do keep in as I like them on my breakfast.

As I had 3 eggs and the recipe required only 1, I decided to double up the quantity and go for a loaf and some muffins – it suggested that either would work. But now I didn’t really have enough bananas, so I ended up using the final egg as the mixture felt a little dry and solid.

By the time I’d added some raisins and chopped nuts , the volume of mix was sufficient for two loaves and a dozen small bun tin muffins. So what started out as trying not to waste five bananas ended up with a pile of baked goods – I have to hope that I can make some room in the freezer. I really enjoyed making it, I haven’t baked like that for a long time.

Please click the photo for a larger view.