Suburban Spring Photos

Usually, May Day is something associated with the countryside. You tend to think of country fairs complete with maypole dancing, Morris dancing and the May Queen pageant. You rarely think about spring in the city or town suburbs, mainly because the first thing that comes to mind are the tall concrete buildings.

I'm lucky to live in the suburbs. It's always nice to look round the back roads and see the trees and flowers that are there. It also means that I live between the city and the countryside, so it's essentially the best of both worlds.

To celebrate May Day, here are some photos I took during the spring in the suburbs where I live. I am a massive photo nut - ever since I managed to get a phone with a camera on it, I have never stopped using it. I especially wanted to capture what springtime is like in my area with the flowers and other plants.

I'm using the close-up photos from my phone here. Not only is this so I don't give away the locations for the sake of privacy, but also to highlight the beauty of nature. However, I will leave little aspects of the urban area in some of the photos if I feel it lends a good contrast to the natural aesthetic of the plants.

  

It's only fitting that crocuses, a flower very often associated with spring, should be the first flowers to appear in my photos here. These were found near benches in one of my local parks, which happens to be next to a bypass. I left part of one of the benches nearby in the last photo. There were some cigarettes nearby unfortunately, but I made sure not to include them.

 

 

Daffodils are another major spring flower, and these ones were planted in circles around tree poles in the park. They're right next to a play park area, and you can see the fence in the last photo.

I also took a picture of some magnolia flowers in the same park. Some of the flowers have already opened up while the others are still closed.

 

There was a day I went out and for some reason a lot of worms were on the ground. I took a few close-ups of them - these are just a few of the photos and I like the different lengths and widths they have. I've always been a big fan of mini-beasts and worms are just some of my favourites - they have a pretty cool appearance and they're good for helping out the environment, especially when it comes to the soil.

There is a local National Trust place I often go to on Sundays, which happens to be in a town area with a train station nearby. There are plenty of birds there, including this heron that I took a photo of. I had to crop some of the photo, but I kept part of the car park in because I felt it showed a nice contrast between the natural world and the urban world.

On Easter Sunday, I went for a walk round the back roads and took some photos of the flowers. Cherry blossoms are always a favourite of mine - I love the pink and white colours they come in, but also the symbolism associated with them.

Magnolias have a similar vibe to cherry blossoms. These ones were going over but they still had the bright pink hues.

This was a flower in a box next to a car park near a high street, done as part of a wild flower project. I don't know if the flower was going over or not, but I loved the wispy edges on the petals.

I think this flower from the same box was a tulip that had split open. I still think flowers look good when they go over - it's interesting to compare what they look like normally and what they look like in this state.

In another one of the boxes was this daffodil. This was one of the few daffodil close-ups I was able to get that didn't involve the flower going over.

 

And of course I had to take these photos of more cherry blossom trees up close. This time, I really made sure to take close-ups of the flowers themselves.

Bluebells are one of my favourite flowers to see in the springtime and this is a small patch of them in the wooded part of one of the local parks. I'm not sure what type they are - I think they're English, but they could also be a hybrid between English and Spanish.

This is a picture of King Alfred's Cake, a fungus that grows on trees. These fungi were in our local park and though fungi aren't normally associated with spring, they look pretty cool.

This is a picture of a daisy that I took on the 28th April. It seems basic and simple, but I do like how it stands out against the green grass and how it looks up close.

Ultimately, what I find interesting about spring time in the urban areas is that it is still possible to signs of nature in them. Besides the National Trust property and the local parks, there are the trees on the roads and the flower boxes in the more city-like areas. It's quite likely why spring is my favourite season of all time. :)