This house plant is being carefully tended at present. With luck and attention these little buds should each become chilli peppers strong enough to have its seeds come with warnings regarding the desirability of industrial strength rubber gloves when handling. Bring them on.
One day short of three years doing this blog and there’s still some scope for novelty — pretty sure that yesterday’s cover stars were the first cattle to feature and here’s the first fish. It and its fellows live in the garden of my friend Doug, in Wetherby (where we were a year ago today, too).
A walk in the Lakes. Specifically, around the southern tip of Windermere. Generally a very nice day except for about 90 minutes of clouds and squally drizzle around lunchtime; at the point this photo was taken things were mostly cleared up. This is the summit of Gummer’s How, a small peak at the end of the lake, and famous (rightly) for its view. These Luing cattle live permanently on the fell and maintain the flora, so we are informed by the noticeboard at the point where the path leaves the road, anyway.
Maybe it would be a better shot if it was just the tree, or just the gate. But it’s what it is. Last day of a week spent mostly at home.
The hardest thing about keeping this blog going on a daily basis is carrying on finding inspiration on days like this, spent working at home. It’s easy when I’m on the road. This week I was supposed to be going to Sweden again, but it’s been cancelled due to a colleague’s illness. So in the absence of that kind of thing, here’s another picture of the tables outside the pub on a nice sunny evening.
Ah, free food. Come to daddy.
They’re early this year but then again so has everything been, since February. And who needs barbed wire when you have a stand of brambles to protect your property.
Man, today was a tough day to fulfill the daily commission. Mostly grey light, I was working indoors, very little going on. The only variety was that the house I was working in was my in-laws’, not my own, so the garden provided some minor options in one of the few bursts of light that emerged. But it’s hardly exciting. Don’t expect much different tomorrow either, I’ll warn you now…
Looks nice? It isn’t. This is Himalayan Balsam, Impatiens glandulifera, introduced into the UK by some Victorian gentleman who, if he was still alive, should be made to crawl around the country stuffing the consequences of his marketing opportunity up his bottom. This is the major invasive weed around here, possibly even the biggest local environmental problem we have right now. I’d say ‘if you see this plant kill it’ but apparently the expert advice is that even that might just make it worse (as if it were a hydra, or something). The only answer seems to be to develop a taste for eating it — which no other UK species has yet managed, hence the problem.
Wandered out this morning on some inconsequential errand or other and took a shot of some random vista with a cat in the middle distance. Said cat then came straight over to me and virtually demanded that I did its close-ups. Well, who am I to refuse.
Beautiful weather at the moment and it’s always nice when the garden starts to produce.
And well done to Germany, too.
Being 42 