Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
A eucalyptus with long strips of sloughed bark in a plantation of eucalyptus close to the former Woodhorn Colliery, Ashington, Northumberland.
I find it hard to believe that this is the regular way a eucalyptus would shed its bark, has this tree been struck by a lightning?
I photographed this heart urchin, Echinocardium cordatum, on the strandline at Druridge Bay in April.
One reason that I’ve started doing daily drawings again is to make a record of how my tremor effects me in the run up to my physio appointment for my thumb problem in two or three weeks’ time.
When it’s bad the tremor certainly results in a lively drawing but, when I get over my current cold, I look forward to being a little bit more in control!
Knotted wrack, Ascophyllum nodosum, has single bladders in the middle of its fronds.
The first day of summer, so I thought it was time that I got back to my A5 landscape format sketchbook.
On Monday my sister Linda and cousin Kathleen joined Barbara and I on a short tour of some of our Bell family history locations north of Retford around Sutton-cum-Lound, North Nottinghamshire.
Blaco Hill Cottages, between Lound and Mattersey, was the home of our great grandfather John Bell, a gardener, born 1842, and his wife, our great grandmother, Helena, nee Whitehead, born 1845.
It was the birthplace of my grandfather, Robert Bell, and several of his siblings.
Our thanks to Victoria of Blaco Hill Farm for giving us a guided tour.
The Grade II listed farm house is currently being renovated. During re-roofing they found straw, a form of insulation, stuffed beneath the slates.
Victoria sent me a photograph of an oil-on-canvas painting of the farm.
A closer look at some of the uninvited plants which have made themselves at home around the raised bed behind the pond: groundsel in the disturbed soil (we do occasionally dig it) on top of the bed, lungwort at the edge of the wood-chip path and Spanish bluebell in damper soil.
A couple of house plants: a fern and our new sail plant, Spathiphyllum.
The blackbird is singing from the crab apple, the chiff-chaff more or less continuous from the blackthorn at the edge of the wood. There’s an occasional wood pigeon calling softly in the background and raucous sparrows erupting every now and then in the holly and hawthorn hedge.
It’s sunny with a bit of a breeze; an male orange tip is the only butterfly I spot as I draw.
Spanish bluebell behind the pond has now gone to seed. The lungwort has gone to seed and is wilting in the sun.
The woolly hat season is over it’s onto sun hats and with my Lowe Alpine Aleutian standing by for when this dry spell ends.
Delighted that a deer hide glove, which I’d assumed has disappeared into a compost bin amongst hedge trimmings, turned up today in a drawer at the back of the garage.
My mother-in-law Betty Ellis didn’t feel much like celebrating on VE Day, eighty years ago. Her husband Bill was still in Italy, south of the River Po, and would soon be posted to North Africa and later to Northern Italy, close to the border with Yugoslavia.
The celebrations came a year later, as Betty and Bill recall in this short extract from a 45 minute cassette tape, which I recorded at the time of the 50th anniversary of VE Day in 1995.
There are a few comments from me and my mum in the background.
Betty lived on Gervaise Road, Horbury. Hagenbach’s baker’s was on the High Street, in the shop which is now the Darling Reads bookshop.
Bill returned to Westgate Station, Wakefield.
My thanks to George Senior, one of her great-grandsons, for restoring the sound quality on this recording.
The Peace Lily, Spathiphyllum, isn’t a lily but a member of the Arum family, so related to Cuckoo Pint, also known as Wild Arum.