Tag: walk

A Walk to the Woodlands

On my brief timetable, I planned a local walk to the woodlands to abide with restrctions, but also gather the photos I needed. I have not found the time to go out and exercise much through this, so a good walk was probably for the best today anyway!

I had visions of finding mushrooms in this quite overcast and shadowy environment, but I actually found a lot more textural elements that I liked, finding a lot of different patterns in the bark and the fallen trees.

Texture in the trees

There was such a variety of patterns in the bark, from the quite straight dents to the long straight parts in the stumps. I also found uneven barks and moss which adds to it even more.

Plant and Leaves

I found a lot of good bunches of leaves for motifs, some of which I had seen before which I expected because the woodland was so close to my own garden, I also thought about how they would look as motifs when I took the pictures, as I want the motifs to have quite realistic shapes and growth to actually resemble the leaves.

Exploring the Environment

The woodlands had suffered some damage lately with the winds, so avoiding these fallen trees was important. I found a lot of small holes around an old fallen stump, I thought this was quite a good little home for some voles or something, and as I was moving around to get a good angle, I saw something move out of the corner of my eye the other side of it. I also found a little battered shed which links with my idea of exploring how animals can make use of ‘man-made’ structures in the wild, such as hedgehogs using sheds. Lastly I found a lot of bonfire type piles, probably just from the farmer cleaning up as there are sheep in the fields next to the woodlands and its where they shelter during bad or cold weather. I also found around 15 nestboxes on the trees, they looked old but I peeked inside two of them, finding eggs from a blue tit and from a pied flycatcher. It would be really interesting to watch activities of these birds, so i’m wondering about setting up my wildlife camera out there somewhere and seeing what I could capture.

A Walk around the Field

At the bottom of my garden we have a small field, only an acre which is enough to have a few grazing sheep to keep the grass down. I do not go in the field very often, it’s pretty much the only place on my property where neighbours could see me and the garden being overgrown and full of plants is more interesting.

I have been around the garden quite a few times, taking photos, looking for and collecting leaves to print with, and looking for signs of hedgehogs and setting up my camera. Then I thought about the field’s hedgerows, there are two quite grown sides so i thought it was worth a few minutes wander to see if there was anything interesting there.

The sheep, and the two hedgerows

So here you can see the two hedgerows with a variety of different shapes trees and leaves along it, and my new friends who decided to follow me!

A variety of the plants I found on the way

I found a good range of plants, from the usual oak trees and shrubs, to the odd holly bush, a foxglove and some interesting looking leaves. I tried to capture all the photos like they could be a motif, so using the last few inches of a branch with the flowering ends to them that would look good as a motif.

The mystery Plant

I also found this mystery plant last week, growing out of a pit where we dump concrete waste until it gets covered over in the future, but I noticed this quite large and unusual plant growing out of it. It had a very thick stem in the middle with these large leaves coming off of it, and when I went to pull a leaf off of it to print with, I found out there were spikes on the underside of it. I send images of it to my nan, who is a long-time gardener and grower, she made a few suggestions but could not identify it easily. I send it to a groupchat of my friends last night and luckily one of their mothers works in the National Trust, and identified it as a teasel. Teasels usually grow thistle type flowers out of the top, so without this it is hard to identify. Teasels are good for feeding some small birds, such as goldfinches, when they do flower, so I think this is definitely worth keeping!

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