Boxing Day Walk

Tags

fields, oak trees, walking, winter

On the fifth day of Christmas my true love sent to me, a display of Easter chocolate at the supermarket.

Despite the cold and cloud Richard and I had a very pleasant walk on Boxing Day.  We had no wish to drive anywhere so we had our usual amble across the fields.

One of next-door’s chickens searching for grubs in the leaf litter of the road-side

Richard walking along the edge of a field of wheat or barley.

I love the look of leafless trees. These are English Oaks

Millet

Many of you will remember the walk I had along this path in the summer when I found this plant in flower and didn’t recognise it as millet.  I have Allen of nhgardensolutions to thank for the identification and also Rachel from coulddoworse.me for explaining links to me (though because of my ineptitude and through no fault of Rachel’s, I have still had a lot of difficulty and a lot of help from family in getting them to work!).  Allen’s posts are full of the small but beautiful things he sees on his trails in New Hampshire and he has taught me to slow down even further and look yet more closely at the natural world around me.  Rachel’s posts are packed with anecdotes about her life in London, her lovely family and the walks she takes through the city streets and parks.  She cooks and crochets and reads and gardens and is so inspiring!

This is what the millet looked like in the summer

…and these two photos show what it looked like in October when Richard, Elinor and I went for a walk after Richard had got home from work.  One of the last evening walks we took before the clocks went back.  We thought it would be harvested for seed but from the look of the field on Boxing Day it had just been left to dry and die.  A puzzle.

We also saw a few sugar beet plants in amongst the dead grass

and holes that we weren’t able to see when the leaves were on the trees.

A few tough Mayweed flowers that are struggling on even through a few frosts

The Beck was low but showed signs of when it had been very high a short time ago. It rose again on Boxing Day night and flooded the road at the Washes for a short while.

This little stream looks so much nicer in the spring and summer.

We saw lichen on branches…

…and a few rosehips.

English Oak

These pictures are of my favourite ancient oak tree seen over the hedge from the lane.  I went into the field it stands in and took a photo of the whole tree as well.

These are three more oaks we saw on our walk.

The lane with Richard in the distance showing how far I had lagged behind him

A wet and poorly drained field at the top of the lane. It looks like some heavy vehicle sunk into the soil here.

Looking back in the direction we had come

Looking towards Flixton where we had been to church on Christmas Eve. There is a wood there on a slight rise in the land.

We saw these new green leaves – the plants have become very confused as the temperature swings from freezing to 10 degrees C or more and then back down to freezing again.

The Washes don’t often dry out in the winter.

That photograph reminded me of one I took when we last walked this way in October.

The sun had set but there was such beautiful silver light in the sky and this was reflected in the shallow puddles on the road

A typical early winter scene. The field is full of dead thistles

These are Common Alder cones, the female catkins. I tried very hard to photograph the male catkins but I couldn’t get the camera to focus on them.