Spring is such a wonderful time of year. The earth starts to wake from its winter slumber and everything is revived, fresh, anew and bursting into life. Colour sharpens as buds open and blossoms begin to paint hues on the landscape. Fresh greens drench the vista as shrubs, trees and other foliage start pushing out shoots and the skeletal forms of winter begin to disappear under a shroud of foliage. A chlorophyll cloak of blades, stalks, needles and leaves forms over the landscape. A botanical display of renewed life bringing with it new hope and new beginnings.
There is one plant that has always amused me. The humble beech tree. It is renowned for holding on to its leaves throughout winter. After the spring and summer season its leaves turn from green to a golden orange colour and shrink and distort slightly as they lose their moisture. They only really start to shed their leaves when the new reddish brown, bullet-shaped leaf buds form in springtime and last seasons foliage falls to the earth just as the new bud is about the open.
While I was visiting Hardcastle Crags this spring, the beech trees where on the brink of this transitional period. Many leaves had fallen leaving a rusty coloured carpet under each of the trees, but there were still plenty of leaves clinging on and dancing in the spring sunlight. It was nice to witness this transformation and I thought I would record it by taking a few photographs. I quite enjoyed looking for decent compositions and finding some interest in amongst the branches of these beautiful trees. The more I looked, the more I wanted to photograph. Such delicate beauty on display and such sharp colour framed against the woody background.
Here are some of the images that I took on the day.
© Mike Barrett Photography 2021 – All Rights Reserved
