Cats in the Kitchen, Flora in the Garden

One of my favourite walks in the village takes me down a bridle path, which is edged on one side with cultivated fields and on the other with a copse, which is eventually replaced by fields, then the church and churchyard. The copse is beautiful, and these are photographs of it. Whenever I see the copse the lines 'I know a bank where the wild thyme blows...' go through my head, although that's not what grows here, it just is another of those magical places. The photographs from a few weeks ago show it carpeted with bluebells in the spring sunlight. I think you can just make out the blue carpet across the middle of the photo. As the bluebell season progresses all you can see is this wonderful blue. Then slowly as the spring season progresses the bluebells die, the undergrowth springs up to cover them and the canopy of leaves on the trees becomes denser. The sweet innocence of the bluebells is replaced by a darker flowering.



Up spring the ferns, slightly reptilian and primordial and with them, the foxgloves, tall spires of deep pink velvety bells with their spotted brown interiors. What is hiding under these ferns and behind the foxgloves watching your passing?




As summer moves onward those ferns become denser and the tree canopy thicker, just occasional slats of sunlight hit the copse floor, it is a cool dark place in the heat of the summers day, but would it entice you to linger and rest within its confines, or would you be scared to sleep and fall under an enchantment, from which when you woke you would find the world had passed you by and minutes had become years.



Best to pass the copse by without lingering, especially when evening is nigh and the church bell tolls calling honest workers back to their supper, best to hurry on to where you can see the spire of the church ahead of you to the safety of the churchyard and through the kissing gate, down the steps and along the road to home, safe from the temptations of enchantment.

I hope you have enjoyed this embroidered magical walk with me along the bridle path, but it is a walk where you can let your imagination roam unfettered. I do enjoy looking at photographs I have taken of places of beauty and weaving a story around them, try it, it is such fun. The picture of the church is taken from around the bend in the river late in the day, sorry if it has printed rather darkly. It is just so lovely to have my scanner working properly again and be able to upload photographs I want to show you all.

I just want to thank all the new friends who have commented and, of course, all of the old friends who continue to visit, I am enjoying my blog so much, and I check on yours just about every day, although I don't always leave a comment. We all have so many ideas we can exchange and we can learn so much from each other.