Reflections on photographs of wild flowers I took this week

June is such a marvellous month for wild flowers.

Buttercups are finding their stride and sprawl. In golden gangs they compete with Cow Parsley tangles, both leggy lovelies loose on summer lanes.

I have been up on the East coast this week staying with my mum, and have been enjoying the difference in scenery.

Whilst I appreciate the rich green tapestries of home in West Yorkshire, it has been a welcome change to take in the coast, especially the flowers and grasses. Many of the plants are the same, but against a new backdrop, they adopt different meaning.

Poppies are one of my favourite blooms. Particularly red ones.

They are compelling, striking through a scene, bold and bloody, leading you decisively to their brazen beauty and beady black eyes.

For me, they embody the concept of strength in fragility. No matter how many you encounter, the raw emotion of their bleed is always fervently delivered. En masse in fields they are a rolling red sea of open hearts, whilst alone or in pairs as here, they flap their flimsy as beaten wings of tragic love butterflies. Forever chained to their naive green.

For me the lure of wild flowers is either in their contrast with their surroundings as with the poppy, or in the way they complement it.

I love the way the flat tops of these flowers (below) mirror the sky, sand and sea foam. It feels a perfect artistic placement. Without this background, they are simply ivory flowers but a seascape backdrop lends milk and peach murmurs via the tide, dabs of cloud and sand. It is reminiscent of the way one potato prints a simple shape only for it to become faded and ghostlike the more it is reproduced.

A little further down the coast, I saw the burn of sorrel. Again, their coastal situation added new interest for me, the coral colour and knotted texture making me think of the thick rope I used to see securing rowing boats.

I can’t see an image like this without thinking of the ‘itching powder’ we used to make as children. There is something about taking such wild grasses between your fingers, detaching and liberating its seed from stem that is a timeless pleasure. I still enjoy feeling it tear away in my hands, scattering it unceremoniously to the heathen will of the elements.

Down at Filey Dams, I enjoyed the plants and flowers that thrive in water and marshland.

Ponds always evoke impressionist paintings to me. The blurred symmetry that becomes more at one as you squint your eyes.

I like the way that as the image is reproduced in the water, the rushes become scrawled stripes and lines. A vivid video tape picture chewed up in a liquid machine.

I mused that the rushes with the creamy fluffy tops were skinny green Father Christmases, all beard. My mum commented what a lovely lining the fluff would make for nests. I don’t know if birds consider such things but the idea appealed to me. Bird parents gathering up the soft sheddings, their chicks hatching into puffy, little duvets.

And finally, I admired Yellow Flag Water Irises. The papery nature of their horn like composition, yellow speckled with brown and red cute freckles. The cheer of fluttering canaries.

Flowers teach us so much. Their fortitude and adaptability to ‘make it work’ on both cliff edges or in deep water.

The way they make the most of their short season.

So, whenever you read this, remember you too have the same qualities.

It is possible to be strong yet vulnerable, both bold and beautiful.

To attract and inspire from far and wide.

You can have others drink in your magnificence, take what they need, and still, you will be replenished by the unwavering gold of a sun that never surrenders.