Field Flowers

I went out looking for fungi in the wood at the back of us – climbed over the fence, jumped over the stream and clambered about among fallen old trees and little young saplings. I found a couple of little toadstools

The moss is Polytrichum commune – very common around here

and some hard fern, some heather, and a tiny oak tree growing out of the root ball of a fallen tree.

By this time I'd acquired a new collection of midge bites and decided to go back into the massive, open, midge-free field and follow some deer tracks. Heading away from oor hoos at the Boggy Brae,

the first thing I came across that I've never seen before was dock leaves eaten up between their veins:

Then I came across various lovely wild flowers and realised where the Devil's Bit Scabious in my garden comes from

Devil's Bit Scabious (Succisa pratensis) and soft rush

Devil's bit Scabious

Sneezwort (Achillea ptarmica)

Wild angelica (Angelica sylvestris)

Thistledown of Creeping thistle (Cirsium arvense)

The lovely colours of ripe dock seed against bracken

Along the top of the field the rowan trees were looking good:

The field dips away at the far end so, without climbing onto a fence post or up a tree, this  is all you can see of  Boggy Braedom from there:

At the far end there are larch trees

A curtain of larch with rowan behind

larch cones and 'larch lumps' of leaves
(spruce some singly, pine comes in pairs, and
larch comes in larch lumps ;-)

And then I was homeward bound, just as the smirr began to feel a bit damp, so the camera went in the rucksack 

ME payback and Dahlias on the compost heap

The 'payback' associated with ME (Myalgic Encephalomyelitis) is difficult to adjust to. The problem for me is judging correctly what will trigger its worst effect which, in my case, is a kind of nauseated, zapped feeling and a sore chest on top of the usual achey limbs and painful facet joints.

The weather over the weekend just gone has been lovely. On Saturday morning I started the autumn- and winter-long task of Boggy Brae hedging while Toad and Toadlet still slumbered. I wedged a ladder between the NW bank and the hedge, making sure it was well tangled in firm branches so couldn't tip, and attacked the top few feet of the rhododendron hedge.

[I just went out at this point and actually measured the longest branch I cut off – two and a half metres. So, yeah, a few feet!]

I didn't do an awful lot – not more than half an hour or so of cutting. Then it was a case of tipping three wheelbarrow loads of small branches and leaves onto a heap in what is fast becoming the Jungle Corner, breaking or cutting some of the woodier parts and stacking them beside the bike shed (there's a convenient narrow space between the bike shed and the coal bunker), and putting the tools away. I left some of the larger branches to deal with another time and just pulled up a couple of barrowsful of Lesser Knotweed (Persicaria campanulata) to finish off with. I found underneath it two small holly trees, a small St.John's Wort and, best of all, some more of the delightful Alpine Enchanter's Nightshade.

So let's say half a morning's work, and I don't rush this stuff. I was hot and needing a cold shower when I'd finished but it was a warm day.

Then yesterday I mowed and strimmed the NW and NE terraces – about six barrows full of grass cuttings and ferns and trimmed back periwinkle (Vinca major). I'd decided not to do more hedging just yet because I'd clearly annoyed my back thigh muscles making them do something unaccustomed on Saturday, and anyway the terrace needed mowing. The back part to the SW still needs doing so, you see, I hadn't overdone anything. Today though: blergh.

So after hanging washing out this morning I gathered my camera bucket – a rectangular mop bucket with gaffer tape along a split in the bottom; it's not waterproof enough to use as a mop bucket any more, but it means I've somewhere dry to put whichever camera (of two) that I'm not using at any particular moment – and tootled out to try and get to know the Panasonic Lumix a bit better. I've pressed all the buttons now and tried different settings without really understanding most of them. I might have to resort to reading the manual. The trouble with manuals is they're always full of jargon that you have to be an expert to understand before you even know what they are talking about!

Last year Toadlet sowed some dahlia seeds in a trough in The Den and we left it in there all summer. They did really well, unlike our dahlia attempts in Oxfordshire which were a flop. In the autumn, when they died down, I tipped the trough of earth onto the compost heap. It got buried over the winter with vegetable peelings various, coffee grounds and teabags, and this year some dahlia plants sprung up. I shall let them do their thing, bury them again in situ and convert that heap into The Dahlia Bed. I like plants that just get on with life.

The sunlight was shining through the petals and insects and spiders were clearly having a ball:

And now, having done that and written this, I'm ready for a venison burger sandwich. Flowers are good for the spirits.

Beach geeking 2

Something on seaweed (open egg cases?)
and some bristleworms

Barnacle encrusted mussel shell

Young barnacles, old barnacles and periwinkles

A limpet shell pool.

The beasties above and below are Lipura maritima. Description in Collins Pocket Guide to the Sea Shore, Barrett and Yonge, 1958: "perhaps 1/8inch long; usually on surface film of rock pools especially where these are small and very sheltered. Upper half of shore, often in groups; also moving on rocks and weeds." I think pools in limpet and mussel shells count as small!

A mussel shell pool

Sand in the making

Just below the water at the low tide mark

Barnacle 'mountains' whose lower slopes look like teeth

Beach geeking

Clickable photos should you wish to see them larger

Autumnal morning

Woke up to a soft, misty morning today and wandered outside in my PJs. The first signs of autumn are showing.

Flowering dock (Rumex obtusifolius)

Dock and Himalayan balsam

Green-veined butterfly on meadowsweet

Flowering currant leaf

Pedunculate Oak, a young one

Eucalyptus

Playing with camera settings or "From bread to carbon"

I made some bread rolls this morning. Toadlet is a bread dragon and I like bread too. So does Toad but he's on a self-chosen, low carb diet so Toadlet and I get to eat it ALL.

After I'd wiped down my kneading board (I just made the dough in the machine), something that has never possessed me before in the twelve years of the bread machine's life possessed me and I decided to wipe the underside of its lid, over the surface of which all the steam carrying twelve years' worth of miniscule particles of cooking bread and scorched splashes of dough had passed before escaping through the steam escape hatch.

The cloth was BLACK!

And the slightly soapy water I rinsed it in was well mucky!

This rare event had to be recorded and, not wishing to waste an opportunity to test the 'arty' settings on my Panasonic Lumix camera, which I've only recently discovered, I tried them out on the sink of water.

Here are the results:

Setting: "mini" – fuzzy corners, kinda 'browned'

Setting: "Toy" – even fuzzier and darker corners!

"high definition" – bright and light

"high def/expressive" combo – darker but perhaps clearer

"expressive/retro" – softer focus, pinkified

"high key" – lightened corners, and everything else!

"low definition" – darkened everything

"sepia" – darkened corners, good focus, probably the
nearest to the 'actual' colour of the water

If I've remembered correctly, the f number was 5.1 for all and the exposure time was 1/60th except for one of them, when it went down to 1/30th (maybe the darkest one?).

The wiped (not scrubbed) lid.
Not bad for twelve years' constant use!
It was pretty dark beforehand.
I guess I can leave it for another 12 years now ;-)

And these are the rolls:

"high definition" – hmm

"normal" with flash

The reality is somewhere between those two images, which just goes to show that the camera always, well quite often anyhow, without adjustments, lies. 

Fun playing. It seems you can combine the Expressive setting with several, or all, of the others. Ditto the Retro one. I'll wait for similar exciting photographic opportunity before testing some more.