Wild Flowers

I have just posted a gallery of wild flower pictures on my Skye Picture Blog - here (click the link). They were all taken within half a mile of Roskhill Barn yesterday afternoon. Here's a sample of one of the pictures:

Northern Marsh Orchid

The roadsides all over Skye are massed with tall grasses and wild flowers at the moment. They all seem to have done even better this year than in previous years - the weather conditions must have helped - we had a mild winter and spring, and no strong winds at all.

There is greater diversity of plant life on the roadsides than on the moorland a few yards back from the road. This must in part be due to the passing traffic helping to distribute seeds, but other factors maybe the disturbance of the soil when the roads were built (here, the main road was built in about 1965), and fences which keep the moorland sheep away from the flowering plants. For safety reasons, to improve visibility, the verges are generally mown later in the summer, but the plants flowering now will have set seed by then. I think this helps with diversity too, as there don't seem to be as many flowering plants in places where the mowing doesn't happen - but the grasses look amazing!

25th June, Roskhill

The moorland is all greener than ever too. It's a fabulous time of year!

Thousands of Photographs

I seem to have quite a large collection of photographs. The oldest I have - precious family photos - were taken before I was born. I also have many prints and slides which I took in the pre-digital age, and many of these I have now scanned to create digital copies of them. I am gradually posting some of the pictures online as galleries connected to my autobiography - 'Three Score and Ten'. My story is not finished yet, but sneak previews are permitted - it's here: Three Score And Ten. And here are a couple of the photos I am talking about -

My Mum's family, taken about 1922. Mum is the little girl with a bow in her hair

My Mum, age 21

I also post photos in my 'Skye in Pictures' blog (sorry - not as often as I would like... it all takes time...). Here's the link - Skye in Pictures.

My biggest collection of online photographs can be found within the Geograph website. This is a still-growing and fascinating collection of over 4 million geo-located images from all over the United Kingdom. On Geograph, I now have some 9,000 photographs uploaded, the majority being taken on the Isle of Skye. Many are simply pictures of what is there - often rather dull empty moorland. But some are a bit more interesting. Here's a link to my profile page on Geograph: Richard Dorrell, and here's a couple of my most recent uploads -