well worn path

the walk from northleach to hampnett church.

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postscript:
an interesting reflection by Jocelyn in the comments section. I'm an admirer of her photographic images on illuminasjon. J's is one of those places I visit and wonder why I didn't think of doing that! then there are other sites I look at with a degree of envy because they focus on subjects I rarely get access to - namely big urban themes and people who like posing in front of cameras.

I was going over some of the old images and wondering whether I'm capturing this other worldliness - unintentionally, or in lieu of anything else.

ah well... thinking of J's sentiment, this from a different ''Soup'';

Went out walking through the wood the other day
And the world was a carpet laid before me
The buds were bursting and the air smelled sweet and strange
And it seemed about a hundred years ago

Mary and I, we would sit upon a gate
Just gazing at some dragon in the sky
What tender days, we had no secrets hid away
Well, it seemed about a hundred years ago...

(100 years ago - rolling stones)

coincidently, I was playing this song just the other day and it struck a chord (no pun intended) with this image.

dandy: the lion's teeth

the much maligned dandelion; the lawnsman's foe!
my aunt phoned today. i remember when she made dandelion wine and we went out into the fields as a group to collect the heads for her. a lot of heads are needed to make a bottle of wine, it's a good job they're not shy flowers.

during the war when coffee was rationed, some folk would collect the roots and roast them before grinding to a powder to make the coffee go further - sometimes they just had the roots and no coffee. i believe the leaves can be eaten like lettuce and the seed heads can be used to tell the time. you blow gently and count how many breathes it takes to disperse all the parachutes - the number of breaths required equals the hour of the day. it works so long as you're not in a hurry - which if you're blowing dandelion clocks, you're obviously not.

dandelion is a corruption of dent de lion which means ''teeth of lion''.

maple blossom

who decides the colours of these things? in the churchyard, a better monument than a headstone.

old stones gathering moss

hard times couldn't wipe the smile from his face.

one of the recycled gravestones at our local church, now retaining the ground by the side of the path.

maple

maternal instinct

lloyd loom

earlier this spring the frogs returned to the pond to spawn.
nothing to do now but sit and catch flies...

fly

coming along the path to nose around the churchyard one evening, i noticed each the leaves of this tree had a single fly roosting underneath - it was a regular fly motel.

azaleas

our patio azaleas are looking good this year despite the neglect. perhaps that's why they're producing flowers - procreation to prevent extinction.

the pot was manoeuvred over the neglected pond for empathy - no, i attempted to get a darker background to bring out the colours.

dorothy

walking around our local churchyard for the first time - we've only been here six years! many of the old stones, some dated as long ago as the mid 1700s, have been reused as retaining walls for terracing and borders. i don't expect the residents mind but it's sad to think that when the stones were placed their loved ones imagined they'd be there for eternity. not so.

calibration time!

i've been worried about my calibration!

i use two monitors, home and work, and work tends to render the images a bit too yellow. i don't do much to the colour, the cameras should perform well and as they look fine on the home one, odds are it's the work one that's duff.

but how do you know for sure?

i found this visual test which is easy to follow; calibration test

so i tried it at work first and, as predicted, it was well out! i made adjustments to correct it but now i'm looking at the home one and it complies far better without any adjustment and even after the modifications on the work one!

castle combe

eggs

thought i'd better catch up on the walks book i got for christmas; three months since i did the last one, which was the first - so this is the second. castle combe!

i took the eos, a mistake because i haven't got it sussed out and it's a brick to carry around. also there wasn't too much to photograph compared to minster lovell. i must get the manual out and read it... ;o)