The Cemetery Bedecked

 Yesterday, before cricket practice - in itself an exercise in futility as the games will probably be rained off again - I took myself for a very gentle run to the cemetery.

It is beautiful, it is peak wildflower there, with the predominant colour being the blue of bluebell and forget me not growing right up to two hundred plus year old gravestones. Buttercup and meadow saxifrage; the last emergences of the season, are now present. and the wild garlic still pungently flowers in its ditch.

It's well worth a pause in my run, on a day that while warmer and dryer than what we'd had before, now had a strong wind that was keeping pollinators out of the air, although I did see a specked wood on the wing. 

Among the beauty, I remembered that this is the worst spring for butterflies I can remember. 

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 30.04.24

New Emergences amongst the Dread

Day whatever it is of self isolation and social distancing, think this is now three weeks in.

Or it might be four. I really don't know.

I decided to get a walk in early today, knowing that the weather was due to take a bad turn as indeed it did. I walked along the river and then through Sconce Park, where the fortification now has dense little clusters of stichwort growing on its slopes.

This is the only place in town where I see these pretty white flowers grow, and it is always pleasing to see them. As it is pleasant to see anything that isn't a horrible news story at the moment to make my anxiety build and take my breath away.

Butterfly wise, I'm seeing holly blue about now, and a fair few white tip females but not the males. Wonder what is going on there? In my little yard, red mason bees are continually examining the crumbling bricks in my back wall and hopefully they will make a home there.

Sand martins have now arrived on the Trent, flying about by the North Marina.

Their enjoyment of spring will not be sullied by anything.

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 12.04.20

The Afternoon Stroll

There's a few more bluebell now open and anemome in bloom in the park today, a day which has been pleasantly dry enough and breezy enough for me to do a spot of handwashing.

My gymwear was getting rather skanky.

I was lucky enough to see another chiff chaff today in the Sconce orchard; they are very hard to see being so small, brown on brown and very flitty. But I got a good few seconds looking at this customer foraging through the trees.

No blackcaps yet; I must pay attention for their badly blown flute song.

I don't know how folk are feeling, but I've been freaked out by shopping, and getting obsessed over packaging. I did catch myself wiping a few things down, but apparently according to a US FDA expert the risk from packaging is virtually nil. I've read of folk quarantining their shopping for a week or soaking it in the bath.

It's a mad world out there.

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 02.04.20

I Got Paid to Walk at Work

So, it's National Walking Month in May, and our workplace has decided to look into providing some led walks around our campus.

Being known for my interest in this sort of thing, I was sent out as a guinea pig in the rain to reconnoitre a route around campus, which I did.

It's only a short little 15 minute stroll, but I came across the first native bluebells I've seen all year in a dirty roadside verge, and there was plenty of garlic mustard to smell too.

I mean, no good day can be complete without smelling garlic mustard.

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 02.05.19

The Bluebells of the Old Oak Wood

When I was walking through the old oak wood yesterday, mooching around the bark path, eyes to the floor, ears primed to the birdsong in the trees, I had a look at the bluebells - both spanish and native varieties are now present - and decided to take some pictures to illustrate the differences between them.

This is a little patch of bluebells I found in the woodland up the slope from the River Devon. Both varieties of bluebell can be found within it.

The spanish variety stands straighter, and has flowers growing out from all directions on the stem. It typically carries more flowers per stem, and seems to appear earlier. You can see that this specimen is passed its best.

By comparison, about a metre away, stood a couple of native bluebells. They are in peak condition, having emerged later, and are bowed over because the flowers only grow from one side of the stem.

I'm not a botanist, I keep saying it! But I do wonder if this explains why foreign species is becoming more and more dominant, while native flowers end up getting hybridised or outcompeted as the earlier growing spanish variety gets first dibbs at the resources, and, having a heavier load of flowers to support, sucks them out of the ground before the native gets its fair share.

Maybe the fact the natives stand not so tall means they get blocked out from the sun? Sharper minds than mine know the answer.

I, after all, am the man who makes making a sandwich into a Krypton Factor challenge of bafflement.

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 20.05.16