Parks and flowers...

I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,

Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,

Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,

With sweet musk roses and with eglantine...

Since this post seems to have been overtaken by the great outdoors and images thereof, it seemed apt to start with that beautiful poetry from A Midsummer Night's Dream. Having the whole day to myself I grabbed the camera and headed for Ryton Pools Country Park in Warkwickshire. A lovely place - there are peaceful walks, plenty of wildlife (there was a particularly noisey cuckoo about this morning), and a cafe which also hires out bikes. There were beautiful spring flowers out and I tried using one of my new close-up filters. I think some more practice is needed to with it to get it spot-on.

Trying the close-up filter for the first time

The walk from the visitor's centre to the pool

Sheep, doing what sheep do...

View over the pool

And then it was home to be faced with a host of golden dandelions where the lawn should be. A massacre with a lawn mower then took place before I got distracted by some further opportunites for using the close-up filter.

Am very happy with the results, and I still have some more new filters to try out too. Plus, I seem to have recovered from my reader's block thanks to James Lee Burke!