WHEN THE MIST CLEARED

First - slug alert. If you don't want to see a slug, don't go down the page.

. . . Let's pause a moment . . . while the squeamish leave . . .

Hello brave remaining souls! Here we go!

This morning, when I woke, there was a mist and the world turned out to be a mass of webs; all of them dripping with silver and and festooned with drops. Some plants were layered with gossamer so thick it was not entirely pleasant. Others were simple and pretty; not an advert for the omni-presence of spiders, but keeping hold of the mist until the sun could steal it.

Another pause while the mist lifts enough to make sense of going out with a camera . . .

Mostly, this is a hedgerow blog but, sometimes, I go for a walk in the streets to see what's there. Autumn. That's what's there. In the sense that autumn is when fruit ripens, autumn runs parallel with much of the summer. Seeds are forming and ripening all the time. This morning, they were dotted with drops left by the mist.

Remember the park where we found the scarlet pimpernel and clover and barley grass? As you see, the main area has been mown but there are sprigs of wall barley ripening round the edges

and . . .

. . . also along the edges, under protection of railings - little plants thrive.

Along the pavements, this being early morning, an army of ground-hugging street cleaners are at work eating sick and poo - and each other.

Some creatures prefer fresh vegetation. Snails are rarely welcome in gardens but, on the street side of a privet hedge they will do little or no harm. A creature has to eat!

Closer

Need cereal for breakfast . . . There are planters outside one of the shops. (One of the shops which is next to an empty shop.) The plants here haven't been planted in a formal way. Their seeds arrived on the wind.

The white lichen in the middle is probably Diploicia canescens

And, beside the traffic, trees the council planted grow lichen. There's something very restful about this. You hardly see it arrive. You hardly see it grow.

It's a mixed bag, a mixed world, a world chugging along mostly unnoticed on a Sunday morning.

But it's there.

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ABOUT TREES

I've been away on holiday, busy, distracted, lazy, inefficient . . . and have lost track of where we are with tree following. If you have recent posts ('recent' defined rather loosely - say, sometime in the last six weeks!) let me know and I'll put links to them here next week.

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