Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
There are a few bright spots of colour beginning to appear on the raised bed behind the pond.
With the afternoon light starting to fade I went for the easier option of photographing them and drawing from my iPad.
This is my first drawing with my refreshed Winsor and Newton watercolour box which I’ve filled with botanical subjects in mind and so far it seems to be working.
Some of the colours in my original Winsor & Newton watercolour box have been worn away to shrivelled husks so I’ve revamped the box with some replacements and some substitutions.
My aim is to make this a palette suitable for painting wild flowers, so, in addition to my regular cool and warm versions of red, yellow and blue, I’ve gone for a warm and cool violet along with Permanent Magenta.
There are probably slightly too many earthy brownish colours, so as I start to use the box I might put some of those on the substitute list and think about an olive green, an indigo or perhaps another yellow, either a gold or an acid yellow.
We’ve never needed to sow marigold seeds over the past few years as they seed themselves in the flower border and around the veg beds.
I’ve drawn one of the seed heads from different angles seen in close up through my magnifier desk lamp.
Drawn with my TWSBI Eco-T pen filled with De Atramentis sepia brown ink.
Seed heads of tansy, from a rough verge in Ossett and yarrow from a grassy area at Newmillerdam.
On Monday morning wisps of thin vapour blew over the surface of the ice. There was a hollow clacking as a child three chunks of ice and rock onto the frozen surface of the lake.
One of a family of four swans touching down at the far side of the overshot the landing site and went skimming along the watery surface of the ice. A drake mallard landing on ice near the open area by the war memorial did something similar but managed to do an about turn and slid back towards the other ducks he’d landed with.
I’d normally assume that this was scentless mayweed but as it was growing at the top of the sandy beach at the foot of the sea wall at North Beach, Bridlington, I’m going for its near-identical relative, sea mayweed, Tripleurospermum maritimum.
As always, at Bridlington last week, I was amazed how tolerant turnstones are of people and dogs walking by just a few yards away.
Bridlington may be ‘West Riding by the Sea’, the most traditionally familiar of Yorkshire’s seaside resorts, but with Flamborough Head jutting out at the end of North Bay, you’re soon on a wilder-looking stretch of coast. I was sorry to hear that the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust had reluctantly decided to close their Living Seas Centre at South Landing to all except booked-in parties but we’re glad that RSPB Bempton is so popular.
Yesterday, 4.30 pm: The Ice Plant, formerly know as Sedum spectabile (will I ever remember that it’s now Hylotelephium?), sits in the last patch of sunlight on an early autumn afternoon as the house casts its shadow further down the back lawn. Its candy pink flower heads are constantly being visited by small bees and occasional bumblebee.
The small bees are gingery light brown with 5 or 66 dark horizontal stripes on the abdomen, so they look like our regular honey bees.
A buzzard circles over the wood and meadow, against a sky latticed with vapour trails alongside diaphanous swirls of cirrus.
I’m eyed warily by a bird in the hawthorn hedge. I get a brief impression of an eye stripe, so a dunnock, a wren or perhaps even an autumn migrant warbler dropping in.
The blue tit and a long-tailed tit seem to have decided that I’m harmless and they’re coming to the sunflower heart feeders just a few feet away from me.
A comfortable 20℃, 69℉, here in the shade with a hint of breeze to keep it fresh.
Back to my Rough Patch drawing a spear thistle but I realise that it is getting to the time of year when I’m going to need to cut back. The birds have finished nesting so I can tackle the hedge that the blackbirds were raising their young in a month ago.
Rough Patch, my ‘sketchbook from the wilder side of the garden’.
It’s years since we bought any marigolds but they’re good at spreading their seeds around the garden. We’ll have plenty of seedlings next year at the top end of the border.
Also well able to seed itself around, the Welsh poppy. If it just spread by seed that would suit me but, unlike the marigold, it can establish itself as a perennial, building up deep dandelion-like tap roots and crowding out other flowers.
This heron, preening in a quiet corner at Adel Dam became watchful and alert when first a buzzard and then a sparrowhawk flew overhead.
Restharrow, pyramidal and common spotted orchids, sea plantain and kidney vetch at Whitby and Scarborough a couple of weeks ago.
The orchids and vetch were growing at the foot of a hummocky slope on South Bay Scarborough, the result of a massive landslide in 1995 which undercut the Holbeck Hall Hotel at the top of the slope. The slope has been stabilised using imported boulders and hardcore.
It’s forecast to be the warmest day of the week but sitting in the shade at the foot of a woodland slope at Newmillerdam it’s like having air conditioning as I draw the hogweed.