Addiction

I have only just started using Instagram and I'm addicted. A bit late I know and I hope I don't bore you over the next few weeks - you never know it may be a short lived addiction, a little like drawing on my ipad! 
Spring was in the air yesterday when I walked around the cemetery with Bill.

Stop and stare 16

I stopped and stared and so did they. There are four living in the cemetery but I didn't manage to get them all in one photo. They had no fear at all, not even of Bill who stopped and stared too.

Wilderness

One of the places I love to walk is the cemetery near to my house. It is a wilderness of old graves, foxes, wrens, woodpeckers, sparrowhawks, owls, squirrels, brambles, beech trees - at least it was. It's being tidied now, smartened up, cut back, regimented. We used to pick pounds of blackberries here, now they've gone, complaints are being made about the foxes, squirrels - will they soon go too? I'm sad.
© 2010 nicky linzey for illustration friday

Poise

I've photographed this angel so many times. She's in one of my favourite places - the cemetery and I cannot believe she is still standing. I definitely think she has poise. I drew her in pen & ink and then layered a photo of some old stone underneath the illustration. The grave is of a 13 year old girl called Boo who died in 1904.

© 2009 nicky linzey for Illustration Friday.

Wild Crocus

What a beautiful day, sun shining and some heat in it too. As I walked through the cemetery in the late afternoon sunshine it seemed Spring was here at last or at least coming soon. I've been meaning to take a picture of these wild crocus for years and only got round to it today, they are in the old part amongst the angels, tombs and crosses. Every year they give my spirits a lift as they appear from the earth, this year even earlier than usual in January.

First Crocus

This morning, flowers cracked open

the earth’s brown shell. Spring

leaves spilled everywhere

though winter’s stern hand

could come down again at any moment

to break the delicate yolk

of a new bloom.

The crocus don’t see this as they chatter

beneath a cheerful petal of spring sky.

They ignore the air’s brisk arm

as they peer at their fresh stems, step

on the leftover fragments

of old leaves.

When the night wind twists them to pieces,

they will die like this: laughing,

tossing their brilliant heads

in the bitter air.

©2007, Christine Klocek-Lim

Chasing squirrels

We've been having fun chasing squirrels this morning, My Jack Russell and I. Running through the crispy Autumn leaves in the cemetery to try and catch one. He has never caught a squirrel yet, the nearest he's come to it was when he chased one up a tree - it lost its footing and fell back down on top of him. I don't know who was the more startled the squirrel, MJR or me but the squirrel's instincts were the fastest and it quickly recovered and escaped back up the tree!

© Photographer: Shaday365 Agency: Dreamstime.com

Morning walk

This morning I decided to record my morning walk in pictures so here it is:

A slice of life

I went out as usual this morning with My Jack Russell - it started to rain as we walked out of the door - lovely refreshing drops on my face - the trees were bursting with green. We walked through the cemetery and saw Jane and her mum talking to Shaun the gravedigger. She (7yrs old) doesn't stop talking and is very inquisitive - he's only too happy to answer her many questions about what he is doing! We saw the old man who tends his wife's grave every morning and then walks into town for an enormous fry up. We passed Sidney's grave and stopped to say hello. Cars halted to let children across the road, young people chatted to older people with concern about their health - even MJR who normally barks at anything that moves was calm.
I felt a fantastic sense of community today in an environment where sometimes it seems there is none.

Can I stroke your dog please?

My Jack Russell and I go for about 3 walks a day and invariably someone stops us to say "Can I stroke your dog please?" It's great because we stop for a chat, get to know all sorts of people and make friends with some of them. We were walking through the cemetery which is one of the most beautiful places (flowers, woodpeckers, foxes infact all sorts of wildlife), when Sidney stopped us to ask "Can I stroke your dog please?". It was the start of a friendship that lasted until his death last year. Sidney's wife died a couple of years previously and he visited her grave twice a day on his way to and from the hospital where he helped out. He organised quizzes, painted outdoor furniture, helped at mealtimes among many other things, for people less fortunate than him (his words), even though he was a frail 85 year old. We saw him nearly every day for a chat until last year. I miss him.