I expect it happens to you. You are pottering along and something catches your eye. So you take its picture. You potter further, begin a project and it starts to rain. You notice this. You snap at that. It's all beautiful but it doesn't amount to a post.
But these are memories which can't be lost. The world wasn't created blog-sized. It's both bigger and smaller than that; bigger and smaller than anything that can be expressed.
So this post is a bundle of pretty things.
First up a Passion Flower.
Where I live, passion flowers are not wild plants but this one has bunged its way through a fence, tangled itself with burdock, bramble and teasel - escaped! There are other plants round here which have done the same thing - honeysuckle, crocosmia, Spanish bluebells.
Next up, a Marmalade Hoverfly (Episyrphus balteatus). I'm so bowled over by its wings I have this little creature as my desktop picture.
Clicking to enlarge recommended!
And it's very little - a little less than a centimetre and ever so thin. Much thinner than, say, the Batman Hoverfly (Myathropa florea) or the bright and substantial Eristalis tenax. (While I'm going on about hoverflies - remember this one a Sphaerophoria scripta? - Oddly long instead of strangely small and thin.) (The usual caveat - I don't know what I'm talking about and rely heavily on fellow iSpot members for IDs.)
The trouble with the picture above though is that it obscures the white in the stripes. Here's the same little creature prancing around on the same flower. Because it's moving, the picture of it is blurred. But I like its elegance as well as its stripes.
And now to the beach where the sea has been chucking up red seaweeds.
There's a kind you can find here and hardly anywhere else in the UK. It's called 'Solieria's Red String Weed'. Isn't that a wonderful name? (Solieria chordalis.) When I first came across it in a book I misread it and for ages thought it was called 'Soldier's Red String Weed' and constructed a complete image of a soldier tying his boots with red laces.
I'd quite like to find out this is what this one is - but it's more likely to be Gracilaria bursa-pastoris. (It's amazing how wise one can seem when spouting Latin possibilities.)
So we'll finish with the prosaic. Sticking up above the brambles and framed by ivy is a dead branch of . . . oh! bother! What is it a dead branch of? Elderberry? It's got lichen on it, whatever it is.
Isn't ignorance wonderful?
The less you know, the more possibilities there are.
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Do you know my other blog, 'Message in a Milk Bottle'?
A photo a day. Mostly plants and trees but not exclusively so.
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Do you know my other blog, 'Message in a Milk Bottle'?
A photo a day. Mostly plants and trees but not exclusively so.
And you can have the pictures sent directly to your inbox if you wish.
How's that for a bargain?
