Trees - Thematic Photography

There are some village trees you become attached to, like these sycamores which stand next door to our front garden.

These beech trees has just been trimmed with the Council's approval. You are not allowed to 'butcher' them.

They are right next to the footpath and from the size of their girth they must have stood there for at least 200 years.

Further up the road is the nearest walnut tree to our bungalow - 400 plus yards away.

I wonder every year if this is where the squirrels get the nuts I keep finding, buried in our back lawn.

As you will have seen it's too early yet for any of these to be in leaf.

However with the horse chestnut in the local wood there are the first signs of things to come.

In the woods themselves there are different signs of life in the trees.

A tree trunk with its roots ripped out of the ground

But check out all the young trees and saplings that surround it, promising to more than fill the gap that it has left.

Elsewhere in the wood there is little left of what was once a tree.

Back home I find the sycamores' revenge in the gravel of our pull-in.

Last year I had to weed out nearly 2000 of the damned things!

Guess I'll need a rest before I get down to that. Just one set of trees to move first.

For the 'inspiration' behind this post just visit Carmi at Thematic-photographic-418-trees.

A-Z Challenge 2016 - Wildflowers 'H'

My theme this year is wild flowers. Most of us will be aware of the flowers that grow in our gardens but what surprises me is how few wild flowers that I know.


I pass them every day but rarely look at them. Well this year will be different - even if many of them may fall under the letter 'X' for unknown.

'H' - Hawthorn, Horse Chestnut

My flowers for 'H' appear on bushes and trees.

The hawthorn is one which appears early and covers hedges in white blossom.

Hawthorn blossom

It is often confused with the blackthorn I wrote about under 'B', but the hawthorn flower appears with the leaves; the blackthorn flowers before the leaves appear.

Hawthorn, also known as May blossom

        "There stands the flowering May-Thorn tree!"

Later in the year the tree/bushes have a small red fruit loved by birds like thrushes, finches and tits.

Haws, the hawthorn fruit

The common hawthorn has a single stone (seed) in each haw. Birds help the bush spread by distributing the stone in their droppings.

One of Britain's trees is a majestic sight bedecked with large white flowers.

Horse chestnut tree in flower

And of course all of us are familiar with the game of conkers.

Conkers on the horse chestnut

Of course you have to get the conkers out of their prickly case before they can be pierced and loaded on a string.

In recent years autumn seems to come early for the tree - in June/July before the conkers are ready the tree's green leaves turn brown.

Characteristic 'browning' of the leaves

Thanks to the activity of the - 

Horse-chestnut leaf miner moth

It's the larvae of the moth that mines between the leaves.

First seen in 2002 in London, this disease which is not detrimental to the tree has spread throughout the country.

Even blue tits cannot eat all the larvae in the leaves which give the tree a distinctly jaded look.

What a shame it would be if it does not remind us of Longfellow's - 

         "Under a spreading chestnut tree

          The village smithy stands."

Attributions:

• Samuel Taylor Coleridge - The Flowering May-Thorn Tree
• Horse-chestnut leaf miner moth - Cameria ohridella - 22 July 2005, by Soebe, Northern Germany - CC BY-SA 3.0 
• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - The Village Blacksmith

In the foreground - Thematic Photography

Frequently things in the foreground get in the way of what you want to shoot. There are times however when they may enhance a photo accidentally, or deliberately if you choose.

In this series of shots I had not intended to include the flag.

View from first green. Mountain Flowers golf course

The course is located at the Homestead, the freshwater resort on Lake Michigan.

Mountain Flowers - view towards the Manitou islands.

Those of you who have read the story of Mishe-Mokwa, the bear who tried to save her cubs from a fire by swimming with them across Lake Michigan, will know that the great spirit Manitou raised the two drowned cubs out of the deep blue waters of the lake - and made them into the islands which he named after himself.

There are times however when what is in the foreground is worth including, like this next shot also from Michigan.

Traverse City harbour, Michigan

When observing the developments in a wood during a year, the item in the foreground is sometimes an important element to study.

Horse chestnut buds in March

And a month later on a branch.

Sycamore leaves - April

For more views in the foreground cross over to Carmi's Thematic-photographic-270,

Leaves - Thematic Photography

This is a topic where I am spoilt for choice as I studied a local wood throughout 2007. However it wasn't the leaves I was interested in when I took this shot in Michigan,

A Chipmunk amongst the leaves.

 

Currently I am taking part in the 2013 A-Z Challenge and there will be shots of leaves under letters yet to come - 'Q' and 'S'. You can look out for them on 19 and 22 April.

Then I have three shots that tie in nicely with an Emily Bronte poem:

Fallen Horse Chestnut Leaves (and some litter)

Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away;

Lengthen night and shorten day;

Every leaf speaks bliss to me

Fluttering from the autumn tree.

I shall smile when wreaths of snow

Blossom where the rose should grow;

I shall sing when night’s decay

Ushers in a drearier day.

 

Small Crab Apples among the fallen Leaves

 Finally before I take my leave:

 

Birch Leaves

But before you leave as well please take a look what others have swept up at Carmi's Thematic-photographic-239.