Spring Fields

One of the joys of living in a rural village is to be able to get out into the fields, and of course they have different characters depending on what the lie of the land is, and what crops are being grown there. In the first photograph below we can see in the distance a field of oilseed rape just starting to flower, and it's separated from the closer field of wheat by a wind-breaking hedgerow of mainly blackthorn in full bloom. Where the rape field meets the road the hedgerow is mainly hawthorn. Bordering the wheat field is a lovely sweeping drainage ditch with a lonely stag-headed oak tree reaching into the sky. Nearby there's a row of younger oaks marking the boundary of the farm yard. Being one of the last trees to come into leaf, the oaks still give a very sombre wintry effect to even a bright spring day. But the blackthorn hedgerow cheers things up enormously!

Hawthorn hedgerow

Stag-headed oak

Row of young oak trees

Blackthorn windbreak