Silver birch by the towpath near Broad Cut Top Lock, Calder Grove.
Silver Birch
Category: Habitats
Beetroot and Marigolds
Immediately I start drawing, a hoverfly zooms in and settle on the lime green top of my pen. As I work there’s a continuous chiff chaff and a v. loud blackbird, with house martins chittering overhead.
Despite several overnight frost setbacks our veg is making progress.
Eucalyptus
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?
Heart Urchin
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
Knotted wrack, Ascophyllum nodosum, has single bladders in the middle of its fronds.
Broad Bean, Basil and Tomato
The first day of summer, so I thought it was time that I got back to my A5 landscape format sketchbook.
Raised Bed
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.
Borlotti Beans
These borlotti beans are ready to go in growing around a couple of wigwams of bamboo canes. The broad beans, sown in the ground a month ago are now emerging.
It might be best to pot on our rather alien-looking courgette seedlings and grow them on in the greenhouse before planting them out in the raised bed.
Whelk Eggs
Whelk eggs, all of them hatched, from the strandline on Druridge Bay, Northumberland last Monday.
Trekking around Town
My latest rucksack for city breaks, the Eurohike Ratio 18.