Sunshine and Shade in the Weald of Kent.

A lovely walk today with the Dog Jed, in the rolling Weald of Kent, with its twelve feet of topsoil.

Across the fields

And into the woods ....

Jed is far, far ahead

But there is plenty to catch the eye

The red, white and blue, original form.

And so, back to the garden gate ...

What could be better?  Not much.

The Bluebells this year are lovelier, by far, than I have ever seen them.

When Spring comes around again, one of its greatest pleasures in southern England is to go and see the bluebells that carpet the woodlands with a hazy blue.

They are prolific in hazel woods, which in turn are prolific around here, and usually have been coppiced for centuries, providing a perfect bluebell environment.

Coppicing is an ancient method of woodland management that involves cutting the trees back almost to the ground every few years, so that they re-grow with thin straight branches.  This gives a nearly everlasting supply of wood for building, fencing and tool-making.

Another advantage of coppicing is that it ensures the  light canopy and dappled sunlight that bluebells prefer, so they become really well established: sometimes the colonies have been growing for hundreds of years, and cover many acres.

And I have never seen them lovelier than they were today on the Downs of West Sussex.

Take a look:

See what I mean?

And here are the Downs, that I love so much, probably because I was born among them.

A Down is a rounded, chalky, and largely treeless hill in southern England, with the same Old English root as "dune", as in sand dune.

I wrote about my favourite Down, and my Dad, here:  A Magic Summer Evening Long Ago.

More on Bluebells, which, as you might expect, are under threat from invasive species.

The Interior Space of Trees

The trees of Newport Beach, California - their graceful shapes, and the lovely negative spaces contained within their bare branches and high-domed canopies - are spectacular, no doubt about it.  

Newport Beach is an upscale but (it has to be said) physically charmless town in a gorgeous position adjoining beach, harbour and bay in southern California.  Apart from many lovely maritime views, it has little of beauty to offer, being mostly encased in concrete.  But along its highways and side-streets, scattered across its vast acres of mall and parking lot, are many large and stunning trees.

I know that they are not native species, which are to be preferred ecologically of course, but they are beautiful, so I hope that they are not too rapacious, and make their due contribution to diversity by sustaining colonies of birds and insects, as they should.

Here is a sampling, from a walk around town this sunny Monday morning, the last in January.

The trunks are also interesting

And quite often the roots are too:

But when it comes to the interior space of trees, this is my favourite:

And for those of you uncertain of your geography, Newport Beach is right here, in Orange County (right hand map), which is in southern California (as shown on the left),

Below that is an ariel view of the town (in the distance).  In the foreground is part of Corona Del Mar, famed as the former residence of the great John Wayne.  The pic shows clearly how built-up the whole area is (with the exception of a few bluffs), and the the trees with which its residential areas are so luxuriantly planted.

Image via Wikipedia

Image via Wikipedi

You may enjoy another short photo essay:  The Trees of Orange County, and perhaps even Five Things I Like about Newport Beach (and three things not so much)