online: 2 may 2005
modified: 3, 4, 5 may 2005

2 may 2005 looking west


18:28 Looking west, a long distance - towards buildings and trees on an horizon, and others on a further horizon, beneath fluffy clouds moving northeastward - i've not enjoyed a view to the west during these last 16 years walking the southern part of the heath but now i can, when i move to this side of it. For me, there is no direction to compare with looking westward, as i was always able to do when i was young, living on the Atlantic coast...

Beyond these low hills before me are the plains of England... and beyond the plains are the hills and mountains of Wales... I shall come here again.

Close behind me here are some pine trees, or firs, as well as many beeches and birches, and others i do not recognise from where i am sitting on this lookout place where one can just see, between tall trees, this view of say 15 km, perhaps 30... Also close to me are new shoots of bramble and many isolated stalks of fern beginning to unroll their leaves exactly as they've done, i imagine, for as long as plants have existed on land. And i see an elder tree in bloom and get up to go and look at it.

I don'think it's an elderberry - could it be some kind of ash - with rows of about 12 small leaves on each twig?



22:25
I've just remembered something seen here yesterday: 'dandelion clocks' - the spheres of white seed parachutes that grow on dandelions (but i thought later in the summer)... Yesterday, on looking into a tiny walled garden (of about four square metres) in front of a house, i saw about 100 of them, simultaneously in seed, and none yet blown away by wind or by breath! (in Britain children used to 'tell the time' by counting how many breaths it took to blow away every seed).


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