The Three Graces

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It is not often one can be grateful for a traffic diversion, especially those in The New Forest which tend to send you miles out of your way. So it was this morning as Jackie drove us out there.

New Milton in mist

Had we not been sent all the way back to New Milton we would not have seen the sun mooning through the mist over Station Road.

The drip, drip, dripping of the melting frost was all there was to be heard in misty Gorley,

where the glassine stream stood still;

Sheep in mist 1

shaggy sheep cropped the grass;

arboreal forms emerged from the gloom;

Dog walker

a woman walked her carefully blended dog,

Cyclist

and a lime-green clad cyclist took his chances on the road to Linwood. In the foreground of this shot stands one of the many posts measuring water levels; in this instance of the stream pictured above.

Trees bedecked with flowers usually mark a spot where someone has died in a road accident. Maybe that is why this oak at the crossroads by the ford has been decorated with fleeting frost, with flowers past their best, with diced mushrooms, and with a clump of once potted bulbs.

Ponies in a field at Mockbeggar were so obscured as to be impossible to tell whether or not they were domesticated. One definitely wore a rug, as their winter garments are termed. This would not be a wild forest creature. Can you spot it?

Misty Ibsley

It would have been equally difficult for the driver coming through Ibsley to have discerned the pony to the left of this picture, had it decided to turn and cross the  road.

It was as the mist was beginning to clear on the approach to Frogham that we encountered a living modern sculpture based on Antonio Canova’s “The Three Graces”.

A chestnut gatecrashed the hay party those finely marbled greys were enjoying.

Stag and family

At Frogham the appearance of a stately stag was somewhat marred by the tangled encumbrance attached to his antlers. Perhaps he was aiming to snaffle the magnificent sloughed set protruding from the field ahead of him.

He was leading his family towards the herd sharing the land with a solitary pony.

As the mist began to clear on either side of Roger Penny Way on our return home, the warming sun caused another to rise from the moors,

House in forest

and exposed a mid-distant group of houses.

This evening we dined on chicken Kiev; peppers stuffed with Jackie’s savoury rice; green beans, and spinach; followed by bread and Benecol pudding with evap. I finished the Madiran.

58 comments

  1. I am beginning to question whether one can have a true appreciation of nature without having the eye of a photographer. Thank goodness you’re here.

  2. Wow–these are wonderful, Derrick. Every time I saw one that I thought was my favorite, another one came along. I really like these misty photos with the ghostly images, but I laughed at your Three Graces reference. 🙂

  3. Derrick! I love these photos. Well done. Now, my blogger-friend: what’s a carefully blended dog and how do you know? I have strange images coming to mind, though you may mean it’s a mixed breed?

    1. Strange that a trio of grey horses elicit the epithet The Three Graces, and yet when I go to one of my regular lunches with my two sisters there are references to Macbeth characters!

  4. You get better each time I call by, and I wonder that a sadistic, cryptic, crossword compiler can have such an eye for such beauty.

    Dr Jekyll & Mister Hyde step aside.

    ( LBoB once was a masochistic, cryptic, crossword, crazy!)
    :twisted”

  5. This was beautiful and moody in its ambience, Derrick. I feel bad for the stag with fishing or athletic netting with an extra point added. The ponies with brown added from a shiny coat were appreciated.
    Those shots were very fine photographs, Derrick. Jackie and you have quite some vivid adventures!

      1. It probably was rather shocking to notice this upon close-up, Derrick!Well, I am sure humans would have to tranquilize this stag to help untangle this mess! Not much you could do or would be able to do. . .

  6. Excellent sequences – ponies & stags, a magical land. 🙂

    It would be wonderfully magical if we could get all the pony & stag poo to appear in the Oval Office of Great Orange Degrader of Liberty.

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