English can be a strange language. I know I would hate to have to learn it! The pronunciation of many of our words seems illogical and inconsistent (think of tough / bough / through / though / cough). And we have so many words with multiple meanings.
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In his poem 'To Autumn' John Keats describes the autumn we all know and love, with lingering warm weather and bountiful harvests. But he also celebrates later autumn days, when winter seems just over the horizon. Both have their beauty.
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In the early nineteenth century the Reverend John Beresford, Baron Decies, decided to turn a swampy area of ground on his estate into an attractive landscape with a lake and woodlands. Many landowners were carrying out similar improvements but perhaps more unusually the Reverend was acting out of philanthropy.
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We photograph flowers for their beautiful colours and shapes. But without seeds we would have no flowers, and those seeds too have their beauty, especially while still on the plant. Their often-dramatic sculptural structures are ideal for macro photography both in colour and monochrome.
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Despite its name, the New Forest isn’t a densely forested area. Yes, there are plenty of trees but also wide open spaces of heathland. The name is historic, dating back to the Domesday Book of 1086. Back then it was the Nova Foresta, declared a royal hunting forest by William the Conqueror.
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Water is an essential element for sustaining life. It provides a habitat for a diverse array of organisms, both in freshwater and in the sea. Aquatic plants, in particular, exhibit a remarkable diversity of form. Some plants thrive underwater, their delicate fronds swaying gently with the currents, while others display their vibrant colours on the water's surface.
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There is something very intriguing about ferns. Almost prehistoric in nature, it is easy when among them to imagine dinosaurs walking the earth. Unsurprising perhaps, as these often-beautiful plants actually predate those dinosaurs!
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For me this past June has been one of more than usually changeable weather. I started the month inside the Arctic Circle where in the first few days of meteorological summer the temperature didn’t rise above six or seven degrees Celsius and was often colder than that. I then returned to a London going into its first heatwave of the summer, hitting thirty degrees on a couple of days. Towards the end of the month the temperature dropped to the more usual, and comfortable, low to mid-twenties.
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Cacti are hard to ignore. They grow where little else will and if you happen to touch one you’ll probably find it even harder to ignore!
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We are saying goodbye this week to a much-valued member of our blogging community, Bren, who sadly died quite recently. Her photography blog has long been a favourite of mine, and an inspiration in my own photographic experiments. Her creative, atmospheric monochrome shots and beautiful soft-focus flowers were always a pleasure to view.
