Is it Spring or Summer?

The title of this post gives a clear indication of the weather conditions today. It may officially be the first day of spring but it could in fact just as well be part of a Scottish summer. Last year we had our best weather in March and although loving this gorgeous weather I do fervently hope that the summer this year will have a bit more to offer during the months it is supposed to be summer. Not that I am complaining as I just love the fact that I could walk without a coat (although with boots!). I managed to sew together half a quilt top this morning so was feeling virtuous and gave myself (and John) licence to take off for the afternoon. We went to yet another reservoir that provides Edinburgh with its drinking water, called Gladhouse Reservoir. You can walk most of the perimeter of this and although we didn't managed it completely (it would take the best part of a day) we did a fair bit of walking, interspersed with stops for photography purposes.

There was a gentle and almost warm breeze which meant that the reflections in the reservoir weren't perfectly still but I feel that gives extra interest to the resulting pictures. The boathouse on the left in the above picture looks very picturesque although on closer inspection it's a bit of a ramshackle affair with a tin roof and lots of cement. Somehow distance tends to hide all its defects.

 I just loved that tree on the left and will come back to photograph it once the year is further advanced. Today the sun was right behind it so all the pictures I took of it had huge amounts of sun flare on it, and somehow it didn't look half as good photographed from the opposite side. By the way the texture in the water there is ice!

And how about this for sheer unadulterated perfection. Just seeing it in my LCD finder made me gasp. As long as beauty like this exists in this world life can never be all bad whatever else is going on. Not that there is muchat the moment, but just being able to see nature in all her splendour soothes my, sometimes very restless, soul.

 All the pictures here are as they came out of the camera. I have resized them for the blog but have not altered them in any other way, such as adding contrast or adjusting the brightness. They don't need it as my camera has captured perfectly what my eye did see.

We did meet 2 other people on a ramble but that was it. We had the place entirely to our selves which was just as well as I kept gasping in delight, uttering wow at regular intervals and exclaiming about how beautiful it all was. John even joined in at times!

The final gasp came towards the end of our walk when we spotted this sculpture made by mother nature herself. I was setting up the shot and saying to John that it looked like some sort of prehistoric creature when suddenly there was the noise of heavy wings flapping and a male pheasant flew up and away, leaving behind two human beings, one of whom thought she had seen a miracle.

I haven't mentioned the blip as I'm going to publish this post first, have a really good look at all the pictures I've used here and then make that all important decision which one it will be today!