White Hawthorn blossoms fill the hedgerows, wild garlic covers the woodland glades and sweet scented cow parsley is everywhere. It is a wonderland of white. The warm April sunshine tempted the bluebells to flower early and sadly that intoxicating fragrance and colour has almost gone. We wait so long for all these spring wonders and in the blink of an eye they fade and then the May blossoms fall like snow. Horse chestnut trees are fully laden with creamy pink flowers and soon the elderflowers will transform the lanes into another wonderland of white.
Do I need to drive to garden centres when I am lucky enough to have a natural garden all around me?
Do I need to drive to the heath and coast when the Vale is so beautiful?
Do I need to look for painting inspiration beyond what I have on my doorstep?
By the River – Lin Adams
If I walk the same path to the river everything changes each time I go – different wild flowers, birds, sky, colours.
Walking a different path leads to ploughed fields, brown earth and green shoots. A wide expanse of farmland.Once upon a time the Vale was full of cows and small dairy farms but the landscape has become more open over the years with fewer trees and hedgerows. A different place to the one Thomas Hardy described as the Vale of Little dairies.
“Here in the valley the world seems to be constructed upon a smaller and more delicate scale …The fields are mere paddocks …Arable lands are few and limited …Such is the Vale of Blackmoor.”
Thomas Hardy. (Tess of the D’Urbervilles)