If my name were Peter Piper, could it be said that, on this blog, if I (Peter Piper) depicted a pack of pickled peppers, how many pickled peppers were in the pack that Peter Piper depicted?
If English is not your first language and any of that makes any sense, then I congratulate you.
Another day when there wasn’t really a great deal to look at, but it was a sunny afternoon with good light, so in the end, something came up. I like how the air behind it seems to shimmer with the promise of a golden summer, but of course all that is in the past — today could have been the last truly sunny and warm day until March, for all we know. And let’s consider ‘post’ as having a double meaning.
While walking, as is my wont, through random parts of the country this afternoon I suddenly became aware that what looked surreally like a set of filing cabinets stuck in a field 1,200 feet above sea level was in fact home to a very, very large number of bees. This was not just a ‘hive’, but an entire bee city. Prudently, I swung round on a considerable detour — but there’s always the zoom lens option. (A note to the managers here — please, put ‘Keep Out!’ signs at both entrances to a field…)
This little new sprig, coming out from what I think is an oak tree (those do look like oak leaves), is catching the light in a figurative sense — but surely a literal one, too. I imagine that it’s exactly because that little patch of trunk achieves direct line of sight to that ball of helium 93 million miles away that the sprig has been encouraged out into the world. Life’s like that.
The garden doesn’t produce vast amounts of food — believe me, self-sufficiency in vegetables is something we are a long way from achieving (though for a few weeks each summer we manage better with fresh fruit). But when edible products do emerge, they get used. We haven’t had fresh peas and beans for years.
So, at least a few of the tomato flowers (as pictured on May 23rd) have made an effort: although don’t imagine that this fruit is very big, nor that there are very many of them. This agriculture lark is not straightforward…
In John Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids is presented the ultimate invasive species. So hostile is it to human life that following a public health disaster the plant simply takes over. I believe some people get to live out a siege future on the Isle of Wight at the end of the novel. It ain’t happening quite so quickly with Himalayan Balsam, but nevertheless I do believe that we are in trouble. There seems to be more of it than ever, this summer.
I’m sure there are worse things to be remembered for, and less appropriate ways of memorialising a loved one. Those whom Barbara left behind are hopefully gratified to see this being properly used. (That is an actual squirrel, in case you were wondering.)
Went on a walk that was neither particularly scenic nor particularly straightforward, but it did have one saving grace: this beauty hovering over the grass of Cutacre Park, between Bolton and Wigan. What must the mouse feel? Does it know its hunter is up there, waiting for it to poke its head out of hiding just for that one crucial second?
Disturbed while I was weeding the garden, this little fella deigned to pose for its close-ups, but its purposefully outstretched front leg suggests it is definitely seeking to move on and continue its own day.
Being 42 