Ilkeston - Rainbow Colours
w/e 04 May 2008
All this week's pictures were taken with a Kodak DX6490

When I saw the red and yellow tulips in the gardens of the Sudbury Almshouses at the corner of Park Road and Park Avenue, it brought to mind the words of the song "I can sing a rainbow". So I set myself a challenge to find examples of flora within the town displaying the other colours in the lyrics of the song.

I looked up the lyrics to make sure I had the colours in the correct order and found to my surprise that there are two versions of the song. I decided to follow the one that starts "Red and yellow and pink and green" and I knew there were numerous examples of pink blossom to be seen all over the town. The area that immediately sprang to mind was between Oakwell Crescent and St Andrews Drive but as I had photographed that before I chose this fine example on Nottingham Road instead.

"Green" was easy but have you noticed how many different shades there are of green? I think this view of Chaucer Old Park shows a fair few of them.

The next line of the song is "Purple and orange and blue" and purple proved a more difficult colour to capture. I remember a few weeks ago seeing some purple flowering nettles on the Manners Link but they have probably gone by now. I did find some pretty purple flowers (left) growing wild at the side of a footpath leading to the Erewash Canal. I also remembered the purple aubrietia that always puts on a glorious display at a property adjacent to the Stanton Road Cemetery but again, I had photographed that before. In the end I decided to resort to taking this shot of two different varieties of aubrietia growing in our own garden.

The Borough Council gardeners have used a number of orange coloured flowers on the traffic islands and other flower beds around the town and marigolds would have been an obvious choice for this colour. I hope though that there is enough orange in these tulips at the Cenotaph in front of the Library to pass muster here.

At this time of year, the obvious choice for "Blue" is a bluebell filled wood and indeed, a visit to Shipley Wood (above and left) produced a number of images. I could of course have resorted once again to our own garden and used an image of forget-me-nots (right). As my wife pointed out I could probably have captured all the colours there too without traipsing all over town - but where's the fun in that! "Red and yellow and pink and green, purple and orange and blue. I can sing a rainbow, sing a rainbow, sing a rainbow too." by Arthur Hamilton from the film Pete Kelly's Blues.

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