Six on Saturday – 17th October 2020

This week it is all about leaves.

1. Birch leaves – the leaves are fast disappearing from the birch trees.

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  birch leaf

2. America hawthorn. Bigger leaves than our native hawthorn, and bigger berries too, though there was no berries this year.

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  American hawthorn

3. Crab apples are looking nice now especially as the leaves are turning yellow.

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  crab apples

4. Lime tree leaves also go a lovely shade of yellow.

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  Lime tree

5. Rowan leaves. Redder leaves. The rowan in the garden has actually lost all it’s leaves already, this one is in the field below the house.

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  Rowan leaves

6. And finally oak leaves, one of my favourite trees.

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  oak

Thank you to The Propagator for hosting Six on Saturday.

Abstract Sunday

Lens-artist photo challenge – abstract

Six on Saturday

We are at that period of late autumn when we get the best colours from the trees around us – so that is this weeks six on Saturday.

1. Oak is probably one of my favourite trees. We have a few young oak in our hedgerow and I have planted some acorns we collected a couple of weeks ago.

Oak

2. The beech hedge is turning from yellow to brown now, and is proving popular with the little birds particularly the blue and coal tits. It’s a great place to hide after you managed to get a whole peanut from the bird feeder!

Beech hedge

3. Larch grows in the wood that borders the garden.

Larch

4. I love the way these willow leaves go banana yellow – we had three nights frost earlier in the week and they really start to yellow up after that.

Willow

5. Lots and lots of rain today – here a dying hazel leaf next to some new shots – a promise of spring to come.

Hazel

6. And finally alder seeds – again covered in raindrops.

Alder

 

Thank you to The Propagator for hosting – Six on Saturday

 

 

Glorious trees

What would we do without our glorious trees? Trees come in all shapes and sizes and yet each one grows from a tiny seed and can live for hundreds of years.

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From giant oaks and beeches……..

Beech tree

Oak tree

beech tree

To smaller wispy things…..

An oak and ivy natural sculpture

Oak trees

They all have their magic.

Inspired by this week’s Lens artist photo challenge #50_trees

Tree

This month  Wild Daffodil’s Monthly Meet Up has the theme “Tree”. Here are some trees from my archives, some of which you may have seen before. Trees are amazing and provide us with so much:- fuel, food, shelter, oxygen to name just a few.

Birch

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beech

birch

beech

beech

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beech

FAiry tree?

Encrusted

The photograph below shows hawthorn branches encrusted in various different lichens. Trees are not just trees, but living ecosystems in their own right.

There are at least eight different lichens here, and these are all on the same tree! It is estimated that there are 1,165 species lichens growing in Ireland, so maybe eight on one tree isn’t that many after all!

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Light

I really like the way light is filtered through trees. So for this week’s one a week photo challenge a tree and light gallery.

 

Belleek woods

Silent Sunday – Autumn Colours

Autumn leaves, Belleek Wood

Expectations

What do we expect from Autumn? Leaves, nuts, fruit, fungi, colours and storms!

inkcaps

fungi

crabapple

Horse chestnut

We’ve already experienced Storm Ophelia (or ex-hurricane Ophelia) which was one of the strongest storms to hit Ireland and caused a lot of damage in the south and south east of Ireland. Some homes are still waiting for their electricity to be restored. It is hard for us to imagine a week without electricity, though our parents and grandparents would have been well used to it (our own area being electrified in 1951). Today, Storm Brian, is passing through, he is not expected to cause as much damage as Ophelia.

Many large trees were felled by Ophelia. This year, we are told is a good seed year for oaks and beech. So it seems appropriate to try and set some seeds to replace some of those that have been lost. We’ve collected some beech nuts from some impressive local beech trees. We’ve also collected some sweet chestnut seeds but only found a few acorns so far.

Sweet chestnuts

beech nuts

Wouldn’t it be amazing if one day one of our collected seeds could look like this (we will of course be long gone!).

Beech tree at Turlough, Co Mayo

Celebrating International day of Biodiversity

22nd May is International Day of Biodiversity. Here are just a few of the recent highlights from the garden and further afield. There is so much wonderful biodiversity out there. Go and explore.

Green viened white

Dandelion

Beech tree

Bluebells

Baby spiders

Bumblebee

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Emperor moth