I want to ride my bicycle

Today, the 12th of March, could well have been a sunny day at the end of April. It's about 8 miles from my home to the school where I work, and with this kind of weather I take the bike. Biking back home at about 5.30 AM the sun stood quite low, and made a great foto-atmosphere. I had wind and sun in my back so I could look around at my ease. At first, there is the "Groene Ster" (the Green Star), a large park East of Leeuwarden which I crossed.

Here the yellow cornel greeted the eyes, next to her red sister (which I didn't picture, next time maybe).

Then I had luck: the insignia of The Hague building its nest on the usual pool.

You find these pools scattered over the landscape nowadays, up to until 20 years ago the stork avoided our country, preferring Northern Germany and Poland to breed. This is really an early spring, these birds normally arrive in April from Africa.

After my stork surprise I biked along a fishing pond, where the scaffoldings badly needed maintenance.

Risking a cold bath I went on one of them, taking a foto of the signs of time and nature on the planks, and, more closely, of cladonia fimbriata (in Dutch: bekertjesmos, in English: I couldn't find the translation) embedded in other small peculiarities.

Then the next surprise: three does, at a considerable distance, but anyway. You see a glimpse of one of them, just like I did, without a binocular or tele-lens. An indication that they get used to human environments, for normally you see these animals in open places in woods only early in the morning or in the evening dusk, now they appear at around 6 on the golflinks already. They must have come from the vast swamps and peat fields covered with alder groves at the other side of the road Leeuwarden-Groningen. I intend to go there to take some interesting pictures.

Then I am almost in Hurdegaryp, driving my bycicle over the road between Tytsjerk and Hurdegaryp, (that's not me on the picture)

where I pictured the cliché of spring: the little lambs. Delicious, with a good amount of garlic and rosemary (at least I think that's the name of this seasoning) :-).