More Bluebells in the wood!

We went to the woods again yesterday, and saw that the Bluebells are steadily increasing in numbers.

Experimenting with the camera again here - which do you prefer, background more or less blurred? The one with it less blurred used a smaller aperture (higher F number) and slower shutter speed, giving a greater depth of field so more of the Bluebells are in focus:

The trees have come on a long way in just a week. Here's how the Hornbeam looks now:

And here's some Sweet Chestnut:

Also, here's a coppiced Sweet Chestnut just putting out its first shoots to recover from being cut a few months ago:

The Crab Apple near our camp is starting to flower:

and the Hawthorn is greening up nicely:

This is a tree (Alder, perhaps?) we cut some years ago, but it's been chewed by rabbits. It's still going to have another go at growing though:

Just for comparison, so you can see the increasing greenery, here's a photo from a week ago and one from yesterday:

We also saw our first Orange Tip butterfly yesterday:

Of course, we couldn't visit the wood without doing a job of some sort. This time we took up a trailer load of pallets we'd collected from a local shop, to make a floor for our new firewood store:

Tracy's been busy back at home too, planting out seeds:

and preparing a plot for them to go into later:

That's all for now. Hopefully the next post will have some pics of newborn lambs... more on that later!

Mike