Friday, April 22, 2011

going, fleeting, twittering
















Before they give way to greater things a mass of lesser celandine.

The lime tree opposite our house is shedding fine tufted seeds which drift in the warm breeze. Because of their lightness they seem animated, moving  like tiny insects. One lands on a page of the magazine which I am reading. It casts the most delicate of shadows, but just for a moment before it flies off. I would like to have photographed it, and, camera on the ready this time, I wait for another to arrive. But  no such luck. I even try to catch one  and to settle  it  on a sheet of white paper But it proves  impossible. It  it is off again the moment I release it.  For half an hour I wait without success hoping that another will land for long enough to photograph.  But if one does come near, it is off immediately. Nature photographers need, above all,  patience which I have not got. Not this morning at least.

As I walk down Mount Sion this afternoon, the hedges on either side of road are alive with sparrows. You can hear them but not always see them. Meanwhile they say that all the sparrows, once so common in London, have left town.

3 comments:

Roderick Robinson said...

I had an idea about the adjective "fleeting" used as one of your headlines. It turned out to be incorrectly based when I Googled. Nevertheless, in a different context, Google revealed something rather more important. The line runs "Most pleasure is feigning, most loving..." etc. How many years, how many decades have I imagined that to be fading, an error that completely disrupts the meaning. A salutary matter to discover one has been a complete idiot for such a long time.

Roderick Robinson said...

A double booboo. Pleasure should of course be friendship. That raises my idiocy to stratospheric levels.

Unknown said...

As a long term committer of booboos I can only smile in sympathy and remark that friendship is pleasure itself.