A WALK ON MAY-DAY

May Days are celebrations of . . . May  . . . and Spring (ish) . . . and manual labour.
Roman Catholic Readers may also be aware it's the Feast of St Joseph the Worker. A pretty good collection of celebrations!

For most of the day I was at the Lyme Regis Fossil Festival. It was really, really sunny - but not too hot. (Perfect.) There were masses of people. (Good for the town.) But not so many one felt crowded. (Good for me!)

I bought a T-shirt with a plesiosaur skeleton on it. Took a look at fossils for sale in a tent. (Bought none. Very particularly I didn't buy the £2,000 crocodile head from Africa.) Drank a cup of coffee from a cafetiere and went to a lecture about pre-historic creatures of the Jurassic Coast.

Then content after a happy day - came home.

Sunny days at this time of year tend to end in misty evenings and it's an inadvertent tradition that I set out to take photographs for Loose and Leafy when it's dull, or rainy or otherwise not-a-good-moment for taking photographs. My last post was sprinkled with rain-drops. Ready for this one, light decided to fail early. (If you are unfamiliar with Dorset, you may find it hard to believe this is one of the hottest and sunniest parts of the UK!)

Well, anyway . . . out I went with my camera.

 Trombidium holosericeum do you think?
(Velvet Mite)

Now the picture at the top of the post . . . you may find it a surprise here. Perhaps, you may think, this would have been more appropriate on my other blog - Message in a Milk Bottle. But if you examine it carefully you will find something very specially interesting - apart from finding a plastic cherub lying on the path. This little doll was very small - barely more than an inch from top to toe - but it showed up bright and pink against the black of tar. Unmissable.

Now do you see why it belongs here? At the bottom edge of the photo, towards the left hand edge, unbeknownst to me at the time, a tiny red creature had walked into frame. The red is extraordinary but I don't know what it is. Anyone?

This next picture . . . I know it will get much blood boiling among readers. Even I, one usually more conscious of the photographic potential in things left lying around than its status as rubbish . . . even I don't like to see washing machines or tumble driers or whacking great bits of board in ditches. But it is fascinating, isn't it? That someone has gone to the trouble of trundling it to a place where cars don't go so they can tip it under a span of honeysuckle and hawthorn.

Next up on my walk . . . 

I tend to call all sorts of plants dandelions when they aren't. Here's one of them which might be . . . or might not be. I don't mean the groundsel (with the little yellow flower) but the one with the bigger leaves. You know how I'm fascinated by urban plants? This is not one, despite the path. Behind me is the sea. Ahead you can see the blur of Alexanders. This is an urban-wannabe.

Here's another thing you will have gathered over the years - that I get to like particular trees and photograph them over and over - even if, like this one - it's impossible to photograph them other than against the light. I've watched a bud from this tree morph into a summer leaf and into autumn. And its seeds ripen. Here we go again - yet more silhouettes on this friendly sycamore.

If you are a long-time reader, you will be familiar with these kind of posts. If you are new to Loose and Leafy, perhaps I should assure you I sometimes take photos of pretty flowers in bright sunlight. In summer there will be butterflies and hoverflies and . . . and . . . things like that. And come autumn there will be hips and haws and blackberries. 

And I've noticed, over time, that despite the ordinariness of what I show you here - I've never yet found anything rare - Loose and Leafy has an indefinable yet specific identity. I reckon if I were to take its name away from the header, and that you found yourself here by chance, you'd know in a trice you'd landed on the Loose and Leafy blog. (Don't you agree?)

Tweet

THE PICTURE THAT CHANGED MY LIFE

I realise it's silly to say this picture has changed my life when I took it only yesterday but it has. It's made me realise something I knew already - which doesn't make sense. Perhaps it's consolidated it, provided such a good example of what I mean, what I think, what's completely fundamental to my life, to my way of seeing things, it's like seeing it, realising it, knowing it again for the first time. Maybe all it is is that I now have an example that I can show you so I can say 'This, this is it. Do you see?'

Here is the picture.

Maybe you should take a moment to guess what it is, or reflect on it if you know its identity straight away.

Groundsel. That's what it is. Groundsel in a kerb. Below is a picture of the same plant.

The top left of the plant is what's shown above. In it you can see that the background is blue because it's in the shadow of a kerb and a garden hedge.

So what is the significance of this picture?

One is that it explains why my posts have become a little erratic. Each week I gather so many hedgerow pictures I find it hard to decide what to put on the blog. I'm not weary of hedgerows. It's that I don't want to weary my readers. After several years of Loose and Leafy, I don't want you to say 'Oh no! Not another hawthorn post!' or 'For heaven's sake, we've seen ragwort / chicory / dandelions already. Indeed we've seen them over and over again. Give us a rest!'. This is the trouble with seasons. They tend to come around a lot.

So I've been looking closer - and have become entranced by hoverflies. I'd thought they were all the same. They aren't. They are dramatically different, one from another.

I've been cutting up pictures; looking at wings

and bodies

This is getting nearer to the point. The closer you go, the more you see.

Back to the groundsel. My neighbour (Esther Montgomery) and I have been working on a project about urban wild plants.* I've been looking at the streets. She's been letting plants arrive in her garden by chance - seeing what happens. Of course, everyone knows what happens if you do this; the place silts up with weeds. And that is what has happened. I can see her garden from my window and to distant eyes it is, indeed, a mess. But the longer she leaves it, the more interesting it will be. Weeds need a few years to settle in, find a balance. Maybe they need protecting from bullies like blackberries but, apart from that . . .

In the streets, I've mainly been interested in finding out what's there. There's a lot. Occasionally photographs of these plants have crept into Loose and Leafy posts* but I try not to let this happen too often. I suspect most people want Loose and Leafy to show something rural, blatantly pretty. Why not? Some hardly ever get out of town.

Some people have never seen the sea.

But I sometimes feel that I'm straining at a leash. I want to show you what's where the cars are. What's there by the bins. So far, in the streets, I've mainly been concerned with noting, observing and doing a little loose and leafy cataloguing (and writing about it  of course, but not here ).

Back to the photo. I may be misjudging. I may be too hopeful that others will see through my ground level eyes. I've got so used to admiring the small, the neglected, the generally uprooted, maybe I'm putting too much weight on it. Will you - do you? see beauty in this groundsel? Please don't say, even to yourselves, 'It's all very well in the roadside but I wouldn't want it here.'. Try to set that aside. Imagine you don't know what it is.

Isn't she lovely? Isn't she beautiful?

Tweet

Try Stevie Wonder - Isn't she lovely?

Lyrics

* Esther's up to 23,000 words. I have over a thousand pictures - and still climbing. She's a way to go. There will come a moment when I'll need to do some pruning!

*Examples of street plants posts.
Loose and leafy post about plants in a playground.
Loose and leafy post about gutters and drains.

P.S. You might like to know that Janet at Garden 65 has an interesting post which includes a diagram which plots and names the veins in a hoverfly wing - Oxen-born Bees - Fact and Legend

FLOWERS IN THE PARK

Leaves tremble. It's a nuisance when you want to take pictures of them but they can't be persuaded to stop. Flowers - the light reflects from their petals and produces white blodges. Sometimes, you have to take several shots before they come out 'right'. The good thing about hedgerows though, I've been thinking, is that the plants there are tough and there are lots of them. This is generally an easy blog. I potter along, take some photos, come home, puzzle about what to miss out when I've seen so many interesting things and . . . post! Delicate plants are not for me.

'Delicate', I've tended to think, is a sort of synonym for 'exotic'. I've never met an orchid but I expect they count. Certainly, there are fewer orchids in the fields than nettles.

Hardly an orchid!
Groudsel growing in through the substantial gap between the roundabout and the grass.
Growing in the same gap as the groundsel (above).
June 17th 2012

As you can tell, my thinking was muddled (exotic = delicate = rare = hard to photo; common = easy) when I decided to take pictures of plants in a park.
I didn't expect much of a challenge. After all, most plants which grow wild in parks are counted as weeds. I'd see what I could find, click - and be done.

Cut-leaved Crane's-bill (Geranium dissectum)
June 17th 2012

'Park' is a loose word for the place I chose. It's more like a field with slides and swings plonked down in it.

I don't yet know what this is.
It's like pineapple mayweed only more substantial and without the smell.

One basket ball net - one. One goal post for five a side - one! (What kind of sports did the designers have in mind?) There's a roundabout and a jiggly version of a seesaw on a spring. Every so often someone comes along and mows the grass. In the meantime, it can grow quite tall, not tall-tall but, away from the trampled areas, it's about eight inches high at present. This, I say with approval. Too much mowing is a bad thing. I reckon. Short grass is alright when kept in its place. Too much and it's boring.

White Clover (Trifolium repens) in the grass.

(I know it's not white all the way through

but that's one of its characteristics - 

that this kind of clover can have pink petals mixed in.)

People with tanks of weed killer used to come and spray it but I haven't seen any recently so maybe they've stopped. There's a picnic table and a bench. Children swing on the swings and clamber about on the frame that leads to the slide. It's not an abandoned playground, not in the least, but it is, to my eyes, bleak . . . even though there's a large expanse of grass which is rarely used - after all, how do you play football when there's only one goal?

If I looked, what would I find? Lots. What's more, I found things difficult to photograph. None of these are rare plants but it's taken me more than a week of going back and back to get any photographs worth showing. Wild urban plants wobble, shut their petals, glare back and are much more of a pain to photograph than . . . than nettles. I've had to photograph them over and over again till they came 'right'. (Rainy days haven't helped.)

And it's not just within the park that you notice these flowers.

White Clover (Trifolium repens) from the street side.
(The tarmac is the pavement.)
June 11TH 2012

They creep under the fence too.

Scarlet Pimpernel (Anagallis arvensis)
 June 17th 2012

Scarlet Pimpernel flowers have been specially difficult to photograph. Not only are they small, with fluttering petals (how much they move is not necessarily noticeable till you look (frustratedly!) through the lens) but the flowers have been staying closed through most of the day. Even when it's been sunny, they haven't opened till the afternoon. Because I didn't expect this (know about it?) I kept traipsing backwards and forwards. I have lots of pictures with the flowers shut - in case the plant got pulled up or too rain battered.

Scarlet Pimpernel (Anagallis arvensis)
 June 17th 2012

Although this was annoying, it turned out in an interesting way because over this period is that more have come up in the grass. Above is one in the park but taken through the fence from the outside.

Common Bird's-foot-trefoil (Lotus corniculatus)
June 13th 2012

We probably need a close up for this one!

Isn't it lovely that it's got 'lotus' in its name?

 Black Medick
(Medicago lupulina)
June 6th 2012

Black Medick is one you would quite likely step on - especially as it is beginning to wander out from the edge of the park and on to the pavement. Once again, I find the Latin name surprising. It is not black - and it looks nothing like a lupin! If I carry on learning the scientific name for plants, more will become clear. In the meantime, I'm treasuring the surprise, the mystery, the apparent irrelevance.

And last, but beautifully not least . . .

The dandelion!

* * *

And here's a post-script. I'd like to recommend a blog some of you may not yet have come across

Notes of Nature

by

Tim Havenith

You'll find plants, creatures, ladybird eggs (!) and more. If you like Loose and Leafy, you're almost bound to like Notes of Nature too.

Tweet