A Day to Remember

It's Father's Day today ... and I did indeed journey the short distance up to Pocklington to spend it with my Step-Dad, a truly remarkable soul who, alongside my Mum, has made me the person I am today ....

And it has been a day to remember, as the title of this entry alludes to. We enjoyed a delicious and incredibly succulent piece of roast beef with all the trimmings and lashings of plum crumble and ice cream, washed down with a fine burgundy followed by time spent in the garden and garden centre picking out plants and pots and generally having the perfect family Sunday. So you would think that I'd have captured my Step-Dad at some point throughout the day but alas no ... He's an elusive character when it comes to photography and those shots I did get, didn't really do him justice.

So... instead, I've played on the 'Day to Remember' theme by sharing with you a glimpse of the first poppies of the season that I caught on my journey to Pocklington. Despite the somewhat sombre story behind the poppy in its connections with the fallen during the 1st and 2nd World Wars, I still think of them as a cheerful splash of early summer colour constrasting strikingly with the fresh green of the fields in which they compete for attention. It was a breezy morning and the delicate nature of this actually very hardy plant, meant that they were constantly on the move so I was especially lucky to get this shot in a nanosecond of stillness.

The spring of 1915 was the first time that warm weather began to warm up the countryside after the cold winter at war in 1914-1915. In the region around Ypres in Belgian Flanders, the months of April and May 1915 were unusually warm. Farmers were ploughing their fields close up to the front lines and new life was starting to grow. One of the plants that began to grow in clusters on and around the battle zones was the red field or corn poppy. It is often to be found in or on the edges of fields where grain is grown.

The sight of these delicate, vibrant red flowers growing on the shattered ground caught the attention of a Canadian soldier by the name of John McCrae. He noticed how they had sprung up in the disturbed ground of the burials around the artillery position he was in. He is believed to have composed a poem following the death of a friend at that time, the first lines of which have become some of the most famous written in relation to the First World War.

" In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below"

And the story itself grows from there. I could tell it all here but it would go on too long as have all the wars for which the poppy has been an everlasting symbol of remembrance.

But today has been a good day and the poppies gracing the fields around Pocklington have only served as a reminder that it's been a very Happy Father's Day!