whoiam

Hi Everyone!

This is my first Journal entry so go easy…. (please)

I have submitted a photograph entitled ‘Wasteland’ to the group and I thought I’d like to tell you a little about the place.

I used to live on the edge of Leicester which is a large(ish) city with all that that entails. The wasteland of the photo is actually in the heart of the city – and no-one knows it’s there!
An abandonned railway line, the Great Central Way, has been converted into a public walk/cycle path connecting the city to the suburbs and it’s very popular.

The photo shows an old siding that isn’t visible from any part of the the GCW or, as far as I could make out from any other place or occupied building. I found it one evening while walking home along GCW; I could smell a truly delicious/gorgeous/stunning/heavenly (you choose your favourite adjective) scent wafting subtly on the warm evening air. I stopped awhile, delighted. Then I cast about trying to locate the source…

Eventually, after leaving the GCW, pushing through some hedgerows and negotiating a broken-down fence I found myself in the siding which was abloom with Evening Primroses – the source of the scent!

This place quickly became my Secret Garden, my oasis midst the city grime and I spent many, many happy days and evenings just sitting or wandering there with the only other visitors from the hustle and bustle world being a few dogs taking a few minutes break from walking their owners!

By day it was a haven for butterflies and myriad other insects – their drone and hum almost succeeding in drowning out the more discordant noises of city life.

By night it came alive with moths, bats, hedgehogs, mice and a fox family.

In their season I have watched a mother pheasant taking her brood of chicks for their first foraging lessons and charms of Goldfinches feeding on the thistle seedheads. One evening I was even treated to the sight of a family of weasels sneaking sinuously around, nose-to-tail and looking like a great russet snake.

With each passing season Nature reclaimed this land a little more.

Strangely, I never felt the urge to photograph, paint or otherwise document this land and it was only when I was moving away that I took this picture.

Now I live several hundred miles away from my oasis and I miss it! I miss the scent of the Evening Primroses and I miss the glimpses into the lives of it’s small inhabitants.

One day (soon) I shall take my two children back to where I used to live and I shall show them what I was privileged to see.