Wordless Wednesday: Change

Below is the same site a year ago:

Visit Wordless Wednesday to see more photos that “speak for themselves”.

Friday My Town: Paths, Steps and Walkways

Starting off with couple of favourites from my archives.
▲ Above: A footbridge across the river.
▼ Below: The stairs to Heaven…

▼ Sorry, actually it’s just a footbridge over the railway

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But let’s go in another direction, because this theme also fits in with some other photos I have been meaning to post anyway.

About 10-15 minutes walk from where I live, there is a little park which I have come to call (in blogging context) my Butterfly Park – because I often go there in the late summer/early autumn to look at (and take photos) of butterflies attracted to the flowers there. Occasionally also to the walkways! ;) ▼

The flowerbeds are surrounded by yew hedges;
below that area there is an open lawn for croquet. 
Well – depending on time of the year! ▼

Copied from my old blog The Island of the Voices. Can’t find the original photo.

▲ Croquet lawn in the winter! (Good luck to you!)

▼ Now, this is how the park used to look. ▼

The trees along one side of it offering shadow on a hot day.

And seasonal colour changes in the tree tops.

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▲ In the background above, if you look closely, you see just a glimpse of the roof of a building behind the bare trees in winter. That’s an old military regiment building, nowadays used for other purposes. Between that and the park runs a railway, and between the railway and the park also a road, which used to be lined with trees and bushes on both sides. BUT…

▼ … in the late autumn, 2011, things started to change… ▼

And over winter they’ve kept on changing! ▼▼▼

▲ New view from the croquet lawn

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▲ New view when walking through the Butterfly Park.

Help! I can hardly believe it’s the same park! Was all this necessary?

I know they are going to build houses for people to live in, on the area on the other side of the railway, below the old regiment. (Some of those old buildings have been turned into apartments as well, and others into offices and school premises.)

I suppose they wanted to open up the view… But walking in that park won’t ever be quite the same again! (Oh, I guess I’ll get used to it…)

Maybe they’ll be planting new trees, in a more orderly fashion. But I’m still a little concerned for my butterflies! Even if they keep the flowerbeds among the yew hedges, with all the ‘yummy’ butterfly favourites there… I still fear the butterflies might miss the wilder environment nearby. Last autumn, I got to enjoy the miracle of seeing about a hundred newborn small tortoiseshell butterflies simultaneously in that park. Those caterpillars feed on nettles; and my guess is the eggs were laid and the butterflies “born” in the wild area of trees and bushes and weeds along the railway... With that gone, I wonder if I’ll still be seeing the park crowded with butterflies this summer???

Anyway… I thought I’d document the changes going on!

Wishing everyone a Happy Friday My Town Shoot Out!

~Monica~