Sunday 21 June 2015

Roses and Haystacks

Where I live, June is the month of roses and cherries, of strawberries and the first hay on the fields. The neighbourhood is perfumed with the scent from the flowering privet hedges, roses and many other flowers in people's gardens. As soon as you leave the vicinity of houses and arrive out on the fields, you can smell the new hay and, depending on where your walk leads you, strawberries. It truly is a wonderful time of the year, and the long hours of daylight make it easy to enjoy it even after getting home from work.

Somtimes I go for a (short) walk nearby without my camera; I simply do not expect to come across anything I would want to take a picture of and show to you.

One such walk took me to the palace grounds, where of course there is always something worth looking at, but I've showed you the park so often that I fear you'll be bored to tears by yet another post ont he subject.

However, these two roses were just too perfect not to try and preserve them in pictures:



You know my mobile camera is not the best... but I hope these two shots still convey an idea of how large and beautiful they were! It's a shame the camera can't capture their scent as well. 

On another day when I was out on the fields (again without my camera), I came across some old-fashioned haystacks. 



This is how it used to be done; a frame of wooden poles was set up and the new hay heaped on top. Those haystacks still were to be seen everywhere when I was a kid, although the bale-pressing machines had already been introduced (I am not THAT old). The machines producing those huge rolled-up bales came a bit later, and that is what you see in our parts most of the time now. So, finding these traditional haystacks was like a nostalgic greeting from years long gone. 

As a kid, I would not have thought twice about crawling underneath the stack and playing "house"; as an adult, I think of all the little insects living in the hay and don't want to get too close. That's a shame somehow, isn't it?

6 comments:

  1. Old-fashioned haystacks is a rare sight here too now (not that I'm travelling around a lot these days!)
    As for us getting bord to tears with seeing your castle grounds - I don't think there's much risk of that! :)
    I really rather enjoy getting familiar with other places through blogs.

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    1. Same here, Monica, when it comes to you showing pictures of your beautiful town; I never tire of those, either.
      Been out for another short walk yesterday - thought I'd chance it in between rain clouds threatening all day, and indeed got soaked on my way home. But in the same area where I came across the haystacks I found another field with them. My guess is that they belong to the same farmer, although there is some distance with many other fields and orchards between them,.

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  2. I always assume that there could be something to photograph! It's a while since I saw what we call hay stooks. Even up here in the wilds of the Hebrides we have the big hay roll bales. Cherries! I love cherries and have a big bowl at this time of year which I pick from constantly.

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    1. This year, I managed to pick only a relatively small bowl of cherries from our tree through the kitchen window; my upstairs neighbour has cut off the best branches last year, thinking he was doing me a favour and letting more light into the windows... I ate it all in one go.
      You are right about there always being something to photograph, but taking the camera means I have to take a handbag big enough to fit it in, and sometimes I just don't feel like carrying much around with me. Also, depending on who is on the walk with me, they don't like me stopping for pictures all the time ;-)

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  3. Beautiful roses indeed......And the haystack made me smile remembering a very silly adventure long ago. My husband thought it would be romantic to sleep by a haystack on the Hortobagy, part of the great plain of Hungary. They have enormous haystacks there. So we did that with a large sleeping bag, but I discovered very soon that the hay gave me terrible hay fever and I spent most of that night sneezing my head off. Alas, so much for romance!

    In our part of the world the Amish farmers still make a very old fashioned sort of hay stack. It's lovely to drive through Holmes county when hay is drying.

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    1. Thank you for sharing this funny little story with us, Kristi! I bet you didn't find it all that funny back then...
      I have slept on a beach (a long time ago), but never near a haystack... That night on the beach was romantic, yes, but I must admit my back and shoulders didn't feel very romantic the next morning!

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