And the cloudy days of autumn and winter cometh on...."
(From "Remembrances" - John Clare)
Into the woods this early autumn morning.
Beech tree in silhouette.
An Ugly Milkcap toadstool grows on the heathland edge of the wood.
Puffball or earthball?
Toadstools on birch logs.
Toadstools on beech roots.
A bracket fungus at the base of an ancient beech.
At the wood`s edge, sedge and bog myrtle in the marsh.
The brilliant green of stream plants at the marshland edge.
A silver birch, felled by a storm and snapped at its base like a twig.
Up the hill and out of the beech wood.
Out across the heath and this morning`s bank of cloud blows away southwards across the Channel coast. The north wind brings a blue sky afternoon.
Today began grey, cloudy and with a nip of autumn in the air. Old Dog and I walked in the woods this morning, he sniffing and I looking at the richness of fungi and moss on the forest floor. The trees are still turning from green to gold and yellow, but night rain and winds have started the fall of leaves.
A natural, untidy wood where fallen trunks and branches are not tidied away by man. Allowed to stay, the dying wood is colonised by moss and lichen ,by toadstool and bracket fungus. Softened bark and the rotting wood beneath are home to insects that feed birds and mammals. Old branches are peppered with holes where woodpeckers have drilled for food.
2 comments:
I like that concept of a "natural, untidy wood." A place where the ground underfoot, the eye-level shrubbery, the trees reaching toward the sky all have something interesting to offer.
I will have to do a week's worth of updates all in one go as my blogger thingy hasn't been updating me on your postings.
What a lovely walk and I'd have been looking at all the fungi too!
Post a Comment