As the days grow shorter, and leaves fall, it is not unusual for me to be out when it is dark. My walk to town if I attend meetings or happen to meet up with friends in the evening, takes me, should I chose not to take a detour, along an urban street, at the town end of which stands a Silver Birch Tree.
Of course it is always a joy to see this Silver Birch on the corner backed by a mid range Victorian Villa. It happens to be growing very close to a lamp post. It looked attractive with its white trunk lit up and it fine branches and catkins already forming reading to expand in the warmer spring temperature.
This picture was taken on the night I was walking back from having dinner with friends from my WI photography group. Our leader Janette had set us the theme of night time photography. On the way in I had taken some pictures of our very quiet town centre, which I was fairly pleased with. On the way home I took our my phone and thought to take very pictures of the Silver Birch at night. This is the only one I took, as for some reason the time for me to head home is the time for youngsters to come out and head to town or simply go out to 'hang out with friends'. After a few strange looks as I took the first picture I felt a little too shy to take more!
On Tuesday evening I walked again to another function in the centre, and this time I was able to take a couple more pictures.
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| Silver Birch under street light |
Looking back at my appreciation for the Silver Birch in general, it came to mind that I have planted them in several of my previous gardens. They grow amazingly quickly and the first one I bought was hardly more than a sapling from Woolworths and is now a fine and tall tree, all for less than two pounds. I try when I plant trees to plant them young without any stake or tree guard and have always been successful.
This was the first of my pictures for the month's photography challenges that of Wells Bishop's Palace. Taken with my phone.
At one of our previous homes a tall silver birch grew in the front garden to reach to the third floor. I remember one year a large flock of gold finch alighted and spent time eating the seeds, and another time in front of my very eyes, whilst tacking a heap of ironing, I observed the defoliation of the tree by sawflies, feeding like little pigs at a trough all around the edges of the leaves. It only made for a bare tree for a little while, and the tree was quite recovered the next season and did not suffer the same fate again
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