Another Walk Within the Woods

          I headed to the Marston Centre for a walk around the woods, and as I took to walk anti clockwise around the central reserved area, I came across a couple of possibly volunteers, who were hacking back some of the longer branches surrounding the wide, outer grassy avenues encircling the lakes. They were certainly facing a lengthy task ahead if two was the entire task force!
          During the course of the day’s walk, the most striking aspect was the abundance of berries this year, so it is no surprise that they feature extensively in this gallery of images. Is this a portent of a hard winter to come? Another observation was I felt there was a larger preponderance of black-spotted and other leaf damage. Although I do visit these woods with some frequency, it is some time since I had seen any horse riders, which is probably down to Covid.
          I am always attracted to the constantly evolving stages in the lifecycle of plants through the seasons, and this day was no exception. This season’s Teazels is such an example, so it is hardly surprising my eye and thus my camera has featured their heads, one particular image of three heads really caught my eye as it was as if the three were in competition for intricate curling! I award the central one of the trio for special mention! Later, I spotted a brown, wind-blown leaf had become entangled with a lower leaf in an earlier stage of decay, still with rich red colour. To my surprise I spotted a complete cluster of ripe blackberries, and later a couple of funghi, but the strangest shot from the afternoon was a teazel that had completely lost its central core, yet the outer curls were intact!
          Two very large Mistletoe balls also caught my eye, but sadly they were hid from the sun, so their full splendour was not captured, but the second of two attached to the same tree was the largest I have seen — at least twice the diameter of a soccer ball! I was coming to the end of my trip around the woods, but I spotted one last sight of note, where a branch had formed almost a complete circle to host a cluster of its golden-brown seeds with its encircling branch! I left the woods still bathed in sunshine, and high clouds, and buoyed in spirit and spent the day since preparing these words and images with no regrets for a dull day and overnight rain.

Stockwood Discovery – Autumn

The gardens are being prepared for the next season, but this afternoon did not seem like autumn, it was like a warm summer’s day, and I felt hot rather than cool, in part due to the relatively high humidity, but also due to carrying a fairly weighty camera bag then running back and forth while trying to check out further use of the CamRanger. I am still facing re-registration issues, but I am now directly in contact with the ever-helpful developer, Dave Pawlowski, as he has invited me to beta test the product, and somehow I will endeavour to help him cure this irritating recurrence, he also says he is working hard to help me overcome a related missing component related to WiFi. This is already a very polished combination of a hardware device and app that allows both the capture of images remotely from the iPad, or in the Client mode allows the iPad to show the shots on its screen as they are taken remotely.

It was in this mode I was trying to gain further experience by allowing others to see what I was shooting as I went around with just the camera and CamRanger, moments after I had taken them. I want to be able to use both the Remote Control facility where the camera is on a tripod and aimed at either a landscape or wildlife, or close-up on some insect, so I do not represent a distraction, or I am simply trying not to cause camera shake yet able to focus accurately and appropriately for a landscape. In other situations similar to a recent networking event, where it was handy to leave the iPad in view as I took photos of the attendees, I use the Client mode. I was asked at that event whether it were possible to send the images to the large screen they were using, to which I responded: “Not presently; but that I was hopeful”. A further use is to facilitate post processing by reviewing the small Jpegs on the iPad alongside the Mac and doing the culling that much quicker.

Going around the gardens at first there seemed little on display to create a worthy gallery of images, but on closer inspection, both literally and metaphorically I was pleasantly surprised. There were no less than three specimens of the striped red, gold and green beetle resembling a bejewelled ladybird on the last of the lavender being cut back by Jan and her apprentice gardener, Sam. Seemingly it was not an insect they had come across before whereas I had seen some before, though I cannot recall precisely where. It turns out it is chrysolina americana. It seemed a shame to be evicting some of the established insects and losing the wonderful aroma that pervaded the air where they were working. I did later spot a lone clump in isolation.

I also spied a lone and careworn butterfly, some funghi, some still lush ferns, some sunflowers and bright red, and bright white berries of differing species in the gardens, before insanely visiting the greenhouse sauna to see grapes and the voluptuous leaf shapes and cacti. When I came out I was as if I had been caught in a monsoon – I was sodden!