My Mother's Triffids

Mum has always had her little army of plants sitting in the kitchen window, and everyone's favourite is this sort of purple inkspotted sort of creation that seems to flower in clusters throughout the year.

I'm not overly sentimental about domestic flowers, as it were, but I think this thing is wonderful. No idea what it is, but if seems to make all of us a little happier.

Then there is this new addition, this characterful flower that looks like a miniature triffid. Luckily it doesn't sting me in the eyes when I look at it.

The rest of recent events I shall speak of little; but to me it is like Brexit, the culmination of the "reality TV generation" who think that knowing who to vote for on X-Factor or American Idol means they are qualified to deal with complex matters of economics and foreign policy.

There we go.

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 09.11.16

From Creative Studio at Work

Day 6 of my new role at work, and I've been engaging in a bit of design work.

Don't get me wrong. I can't design anything. I can't draw. I can't paint. But, I found myself needing to do a bit of design work today, as opposed to the wordsmithery that is normally expected out of me, and so I began working on what I remember in my University days where called "Creative Executions".

Posters, in other words.

As I went around my new office, scrounging highlighter pens, magic markers and other stationary and giving a moderate display of Tourettisms to the unitiated - Latvians aren't going to know what my constant bowling of imaginary cricket balls signifies - I set to work scrawling, and had a chuckle as I remembered that I'd finally found myself doing the same thing as my father had.

My father could genuinely draw, and worked in advertising for many years until he realised it was a young mans game. Very occasionally as a very small boy, I would meet him as his work day ended at his agency, and I would be given these to play with.

They smelled like Russian petrol and were as toxic as a dip in a Chernobyl stream . They dried up if you left the top off for more than 12 seconds. But they were so vivid, the colour just poured out of them, onto the paper and whatever was beneath it, on to your hands, and thence to your face and mouth.

But they were pure art, for proper artists. They are also a design classic.

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 22.06.16

The Tower of Flowers

For some idiotic reasons of blind ignorance, I only noticed this floral feature outside the library today.

It could have been there since yesterday, it could have been there for two years. I think I'm so used to this section of car park between the library and the cinema to be so utterly grim and concreted that perhaps my brain had decided that there was no way anything colourful, and thus edited it out.

I have no idea. My brain is a peculiar thing, as regular readers will know.

Anyway, I figured it was a nice target for some colour close up shots, so off I went on macro setting, getting strange looks from passers by yet again.

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 20.08.15

The Glorious Poppies of Newark

The poppies I've photographed below have had a lot of attention in town lately, making the cover of the local newspaper and also being featured on endless twitter feeds and local instagram accounts.

With good reason too, they are stunning.

Last year was a bit of a poor year for poppies, this field was empty, and the half poppy half oilseed half buttercup field that looked like a Zimbabwean flag at a distance - off Clay Lane - was also very subdued. I don't know how that field is looking this year yet, but these Hawton Lane poppies have suddenly exploded into fiery glory in the last few week, compared even to the attractive sight they made a few weeks ago when I last photographed them.

It's a pity the butterflies are struggling to match them. The only ones I'm seeing at all the last few days are speckled woods here and there; orange tips have had a disastrous year with the cool spring and second flight small tortoiseshells and peacocks have yet to emerge. Hopefully the expected blizzard of painted ladies will even things up.

My tree bumblebee nests are incredibly busy. Today, managed to get a photograph of the little ginger buzzers!

Enjoy!

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 18.06.15

Polish cornflowers getting the customers again

Tree bumble factory clocking in

4 woodpigeon eggs broken in my garden this morning

Bumbles love this garden plant

Abandoned blackbird egg

Look at the colour of this field

Beauty from a lower angle