Hmm...okay this is an experiment to see if I can link an image rather than attach a file.http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1288/...7b60b7f32c.jpg

Happy as a pig in...
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1051/...afd0f4467a.jpg
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Apparently, that way of linking isn't supposed to be used, flickr rules have it that it's supposed to link back...I have the code for it, I just don't know where to input that....

Okay...am trying a different way of linking. Apparently the way I was trying just now doesn't work with BB code.

This is me, enjoying the sun :)

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The village school, where my youngest niece goes.

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Pilau just launching into a mad few minutes of jumping about and barking.

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How beautiful! Wow- even I feel better now. Thanks Dana!

This is my valley. You can't tell, but it is surrounded with hills on 3 sides. My camera isn't so good as yours, but hopefully these turned out ok enough. This is the view from my front window. I decided to pick a peaceful place to live and just go ahead and do the commute to the city and back every day. I need cheering up when I get up and when I go home. :) My garden is the little brown spot in the back of the photo. (My first garden- I'm so thrilled- it only took 30 years)
The last one with the trees is the apple orchard from the ground.
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The little shed on the left we just converted into a little art shack. Our first one of those too. It's been so peaceful. God I'm glad to have decided to turn into a country person. Best decision ever.

Is that Wisteria growing over the roof?

Yep sure is xo- another photo...I love the Wysteria.

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These photos were from winter/real early spring- I suppose I should go take some shots of everything in bloom- the apples are almost ready and the wysteria has really covered the whole thing in large green leaves. Pretty.

Oh what a wonderful setting for a home. That's just beautiful.

Just beautiful. i bet its also beautiful in the summer (looks wintery in those shots)

edit: until i saw page 2 and all the sun!

how much do you pay your pretty doggy to pull such cute poses?!

*Smiles at Sun Sparkz* Pilau gets paid in sausages and gravy bones. He gets a bonus if he doesn't bite anybody.

The first shots look less summery because they're taken in the late evening (around 8:30 pm) the second lot of shots were taken a little before lunchtime.

I think my favourite thing in those shots is my niece's school. It's a far cry from the school I (and indeed her father) went to: Gaskell Street Primary, otherwise known as gasbags. Overlooked by the hulk of one of Bolton's remaining redbrick mills, stained black by years of dirt and smog. Surrounded on other sides by a maze of terraced red brick houses and a little fly-built council estate. Every so often there'd be a little green area, where the council had planted stuff to cheer the street up: tight, mean little leaves clustered with violent red berries.

Our Soph, dun't know she's born :P

Aaah...the rolling hillsides! Nice Dana. I think I'll be visiting this thread a lot. What is the purple flower called?

I love your place Cicero! People who live rural ARE the lucky ones.

Dana your pictures are beautiful and so are you. I hope today finds you in better spirits.

That's heather, in bloom. Around here there are whole hillsides carpeted with the stuff.

The yellow gorse bushes are just starting to come into flower, but they look spectacular later in the season. Especially from a distance, they are a kind of child's paint box yellow.

Is Yorkshire a busy city? The kind of thing where you get up out of bed and see your neighbor making coffee in the morning? Or is it kind of a small private town atmosphere with some privacy and quiet? (Sorry my ignorance can be painful at times)

Yeah Sky- we went from a ghetto (in a mid-size town) to the middle of nowhere in another state. Living in a ghetto to save yourself money and trying to plant a community garden- is not really the way to go if any of you are thinking of trying it btw (the road to hell is paved with good intentions). The country has been so refreshing. I don't worry about someone breaking into my car, house, or anyone holding up my husband at gun-point anymore. (well not much) AAaah. That's much better.......I come into the city every day and it just looks like complete pandemonium.

*smiles at Cicero* Yorkshire's a little of everything in that way. Yorkshire is a big place; a County with cities, towns and villages.

Different parts of Yorkshire have different feels to them. I am in what is known as The West Ridings, which is in West Yorkshire. West Yorkshire is very distinct, because much of it. is sprawled across the Pennine range. The closer you get to the Pennines,the more you get the small, textile towns, born of even smaller weaving villages. In fact, the Yorkshire Pennine towns are in some ways more similar to the Lancashire Pennine towns than they are to other areas of Yorkshire. The cities are cramped and less affluent than in the South of England, Bradford, Leeds and Wakefield. And around the cities are towns like mine, raised on wool and dye, and with civic pride built into the town centre. Proving themselves to posterity with the Town Hall and the Piece Hall and the Railway station, so grand for such a little town...now half of it houses a children's science museum.

My part of Yorkshire is a place of hotch potch cities, developed as each new thing passes through, and villages of solid yorkshire stone, and Council house estates built, most improbably at the top of a hill, with the ground at one end just vanishing in a sheer drop down to another beautiful valley.

And Leeds and Bradford with their cultural mix. Walk down the high street and smell spice mixing, there's a little banghra coming from a radio somewhere and people are milling in the centre....further out we're in student digs, grand old town houses, three stories high, bay windows and an attic for the maid, all flats now, full of students and ...those passing through.

Further out, in a different part of Yorkshire:
There's York, once named Jorvik, the famed capital of Erik Bloodaxe, the Viking, warrior king. Framed by stone built city walls, cut through by the River Ouse, and under constant occupation since the iron age, York is the seat of the secondary Archbishopric in England. Richard III was the Duke of York, and the wars between the Houses of York and Lancaster decided the fate of the English nation. Beautiful place, still has a lot of the medieval stuff still there, so good place to visit.

Then there's Sheffield, home of Sheffield Steel, the heart of Yorkshire's industry and coal to drive it. Drive into Sheffield along the motorway and you know you are in The Industrial North.

In between all these places are others much like them and a lot of beautiful countryside....some flat, some mountainous, some lush and some craggy.

Yorkshire is like a little country. There is a great deal of variance between it and other regions and there's also a lot of variance between different parts of Yorkshire. It was of course (long ago, back in the 10th Century) a kingdom in its own right.