Sketching Again - Have a Look

 God bless The Works. It has brought me a large amount of art supplies for very little money, because me spending more than a fiver on pastels and paints is a complete waste of money. 

I like my pastels and black paper the best, as they seem to give the most vivid results. I choose local subjects, working in life or from my own photos.

I know I'm no artist, but I find it really helps my brain to concentrate on art for a few minutes. It helps my Tourettes for those periods, maybe helps with motor co-ordination. . Also, it's something to add to my creative archive. 

And I just like filling books with stuff. I can never have too many notebooks. I might time capsule them somehow. 

Si 

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 28.04.26

Life on the Sedum

 There's nothing at work but bristly ox tongue, but on Sconce Park there are still plants in bloom that the pollinators love. 

The deep pink sedum that grows in the "Mini Sconce" in front of the cafe is proving particularly attractive to honey bees, and after I have had my cup of tea and old school can of Barr's lemonade, I like to go over and have a look and see who is having dinner there.

This post then, is just an excuse to put up a lovely photo I managed to get of two bees. I hope you like it.

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 24.09.23

Something Else Growing in the Garden

 In recent days, i'd noticed that the local blackbird pair, nesting somewhere over my back wall, had been getting very agitated again.

There was a constant stream of scolding "chakks" coming from the trees, with the resident house sparrows on the receiving end of aggression from the male, which didn't seem to bother them one iota.

Another blackbird with the temerity to enter the territory was brutally chased off by both male and female.

It didn't take an Einstein to work out that they'd raised a second brood, and sure enough the other morning, I went out into my little garden to find another fledgling sat there in the usual dumbfounded state when it noticed I was there, it's gape in the beak giving it a puzzled expression. 

The male parent dropped in to give it a bit of snail, but mummy bird with a worm was put off by my presence, and took it away to feed the other juveniles. 

It didn't have the flying strength to get out of the tangle of clematis on my back wall, so I decided to try and get my bike sorted and off to work as soon as possible. 

It wasn't there when I got home, so happily it found its way out at some point. 

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 30.07.22

Greening the Garden

 So, let's have a look and see what progress I've made in turning my garden area, tiny and comprising nothing but flint chips, into some sort of mini-haven for nature. 

This has all been done with pots and containers, but mother nature has added her own splashes of life. 

My alliums attract pollinators, but not as much as the herb robert and ragwort that has erupted through the ground beneath the stones. Tree bumblebees and especially early bumblebees have come down to feed. 

The sparrows use the big sprawling clematis at the back for cover as they dart in and out of the window feeder on the flat upstairs, and my washing line feeder when I can remember to fill it. 

Life has happened in all my containers and pots now, they have all had things sprouting. The lemon and orange and autumn sunflowers are strong, the poppies have sprouted as have the convovulvus and alysium. 

The cornflowers didn't make it though, they grew tall then withered. I think I should have thinned them. Consequently I decided to thin the convovulvus tonight to see if that might help it flourish.

I did it with scissors, and I have no idea if I've done it right! 

We shall see.

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 09.06.22

Garden Activities

 We've not had great weather recently, so I've knocked off the cycling for pleasure for a bit until the sun comes out and the wind drops, and we don't get snow and hale within ten minutes of each other. 

Instead, I've done some more gardening work, filling two planters with wildflower seed bombs, and planting an Asda cornflower kit. I'm planning to add some more in the next couple of days and get some more pollinator friendly plants on the go.

The weather still being bitterly cold at night, I've got a mini greenhouse I've rescued from my family home, and I'm using it to shelter the new plantings at night. The next pots I plant out will also go in there until the nights are warmer. 

Middle age has arrived with a vengeance!

My pre-existing plants, well all the crocuses are over now, but my alliums flower spears have now emerged, the sonetti is still flowering after about 9 months, and there are new blooms coming out on my little alpine plant with a confusing long name I can't remember!

Looking forward to growing more things.

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 09.04.22

Return to Rumbles

 It's taken me a long way to go back to my favourite little cafe in town, as I am just so wary of hospitality establishments, even more so now we are a Tier 2 concern in this town.

All the new directives about not meeting anyone outside your own household indoors are seemingly being completely ignored by the public and not enforced by establishments. We are so going to be stuck with this for a long time.

Rumbles is of course now an outside only operation - my cup of tea came through a hatch in a screen, but it was good to see the same staff in place, and people sat outside enjoying what was a fairly pleasant day by this October's admittedly low standards. I could just sit at a dinky little table and drink my tea and take in information and look at the plants.

It was healthy. It was helpful.

I trotted round the park for a walk afterwards, during this transitional time of the year, listening to Ruby League of all things. The intellectual stuff was when I went running tonight, listening to a dystopian play of Radio 4.

I love my sci fi!

Regards

Simon

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 17.10.20

New Fitness Tracker

 Sorry for the lack of recent content, but the weather has been rancid and I've not been getting out walking as I'd like.

I'm also suffering from a bit of a lack of motivation. Crazy though it sounds, when my old Fitbit tracker bit the dust a few weeks ago, I found it harder to get out there and get racking the step count up. 

So today, I went out and bought a new Huawei Band 4 tracker, with HR and GPS capability (through my phone). I'm hoping it will motivate me to work out more again and shed some of the chub I've put on since returning to work, as well as improving my mental health which has also been a bit up and down lately. 

I've been out running with it - I got drenched - and I also used it during my virtual spin class earlier. To say it was only £29.99 it has far more features than the more expensive Fitbit as well as a pretty colour display. It also charges directly via USB rather than any weird magnetic cradle.

I'll let you know more as I keep using it.

In the nature world, we are well and truly in autumn now, hence the birds at work are flocking up. There are flocks of goldfinch working through the teazel, feeding off the seeds while making spacey sounding calls.

Rabbits are being hit by cars, providing food for the local buzzard family, while the kestrel has resumed hunting, its slim form mastering the breezes and hovering above the long grass. 

I remember coming across partridge at work, but not for a long time now. I wonder where they went.

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 06.10.20

A Surprising Amount of Colour

Did my lunchtime nature walk at work today, and I was surprised to see how much there was in the way of flowers out there.

There were scarlet pimpernel, a new crop of speedwell, a beautiful grass the Flora Incognita tells me is hoarey plantain, and a new crop of borage on the spoil heap that was never quite tidied away after we dug out the herb garden that mutated into the wild vervain patch it is now.

There's still a little bird's foot trefoil in the pictorial meadow, and above my head there were buzzards circling at a high level looking for dead rabbits to feast off.

I haven't seen the local kestrel since I came back to work, I'm sure that will re-appear.

While I write this, we head back towards increased lockdown restrictions. Well, I'm hardly surprised, ever since the pubs opened here social distancing flew out of the window before getting a fast car out of here. The nearest bar to me was having very unsocially distanced fights the first night it opened.

And who'd have thunk it? "Eat Out to (Help spread the virus) Out" had groups of 8 folk from blatantly different households sat in a local hip eatery cum bar, with crowded tables of other diners close by.

I doubt that helped.

Si

All texts and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 08.09.20

Purple Loosetrife Rampant

After two cricket matches over the weekend, I was feeling rather stiff and sore, and so my run early this evening was only a very gentle one - just as well as my calf began to feel a bit of a strain as I trundled along to Cottage Lane nature reserve.

Things are no more or less the same as before the pandemic, apart from the masks you see in the shops. The rowing club were out training on the mirrored Trent, people are even flying hot air balloons which reminds me of when very early during lockdown I came across a couple assembling a powered parachute in Riverside Park.

Lots of people are living normally now, but I'm not.

Out at Cottage Lane, the vivid blue of the tufted vetch is gone, but a new colour is now dominating by the ponds. Lovely purple loosestrife, as id'd again by Flora Incognita, growing on the margins of the water. Joining it are marsh mallow, which probably isn't as tasty to eat as it sounds, and also yellow loosetrife which is totally different in form from its purple relative.

Hopefully this app will continue to help me get better at knowing my wildflowers.

Came back in along the river, past the local swan family, past small family flocks of wagtails and past the windmill. It was good to be out, but my running was rather laboured.

Which reminds me, I need a lot of new kit.

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 31.08.20

Flora Incognita

I've installed the "Flora Incgnita" plant ID app on my phone, and have tested out a little bit in the last two days in between rain showers when I've had a break at work.

Although our campus is now starting to look very autumnal, there are still a few flowers about for me to test the app on or try and ID, and when it works Flora Incognita seems to be a pretty good way of getting a reasonable ID.

It is a very simple app to use, and unlike others seems to be 100% free with a database of several thousand species to ID against. You simply activate the app, take a photo of the top of the flower and if this isn't enough to get a positive result, it asks you to take a picture of the top of the leaf, then a sideview of the whole plant.

It was very quick to confirm pennyroyal, st john's wort, bristly ox-tongue (a new flower to me, and wow you can see how its leaves give it its name) and gave an ID on autumn hawkbit after three photos.

The one it seems confused about is clustertop vervain, AKA verbena. The wild garden seems to have two distinct varieties of vervain growing, one with just long stems leading to the flower head, which I think is your actual cluster top vervain, and another shorter variety with spiny leaves, and a sort of feathery body beneath the flower cluster.

It thinks this is clustertop vervain as well, but I'm not so sure.

It may be that the photo quality wasn't good enough, my Moto G 7 plus struggles with focus on flowers when there is a cluttered background.

I will keep trying it, and report back further.

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 27.08.20