FOOT STICKING - MAY

Honeysuckle beside golden elderberry leaf.

Here's a post where I place my feet somewhere and with at least one of them stuck firmly to the spot, look around to see what I can see. Mostly, I keep both feet 'stuck' but sometimes I wobble then I have to move one or I'll fall over. Once I did fall into a bush by trying to look behind it while keeping my feet in front of it. In some ways this is a meditative exercise. In others, an unconventional form of yoga. Either way, it's surprising what you can see if, for a moment, you stand still and refuse to move.

Today, when I plonked myself in front of a hedgerow, it was its leaves which caught my attention. There are flowers . . . but mostly we're in a kind of flower-lull. Being 'verdant' is currently the 'in' state to be. Or gold. This honeysuckle (above) with it's early reddish-ness is beside a golden elderberry bush. I've never known why some elderberry bushes have golden leaves when most are green. Is it a variety? Is it a deficiency? Is it a mis-identification?

And here's another puzzle; did a golden snail decide to sit on one of the golden leaves because it would be a good place to hide? or did whatever turned the leaves gold turn the snail gold too?

Hedgerow silhouettes have changed again. In winter they were a gathering of arches and spikes. Trees were like frost patterns. With spring they went frothy with blackthorn blossom, then blodgey with hawthorn, fringed with the floppiness of bluebells. Now they have filled out. At first sight they are a green mass, a unity. It's only when you peer in that you see how many plants go into the making of one blob. But the overall hedeginess is broken up here and there with spurts of honeysuckle between us and the sky and the stiffness of desiccated blackberries which somehow got stuck in time last autumn.

Blackthorn . . . I think I've mentioned before how it begins the year dramatically then fades into obscurity during the summer and comes out of hiding in the autumn when people search for its fruits - sloes. It's funny that. Apple trees grow apples. Pear trees grow pears. Raspberry canes grow raspberries - but blackberries grow on brambles and blackthorn bears sloes.

Underfoot, things are a bit . . . um . . . not very attractive. The alexanders have been mown down and all plants shaved to earth level. Now that cyclists rule the world, we pedestrians have to put up with views less interesting so cyclists won't suffer the inconvenience of driving over us when they come round corners.

A few years ago, it was very aggravating when the council shaved the bushes back as well. Since then, there have been flat sided elders and sheer walls of ivy. One gets used to it. Well, no. I haven't got used to it. Nature is not meant to be flat sided. Resigned may be a better description. No. That's not right. Morose. That's better. Brambles would like to take over the world. A certain amount of cutting back is necessary or we'll end up in a thorny mono-culture. And it is good to have a path to walk along . . . but all the same . . . Ah well, don't worry, green will return. It does.

Way high up - too high to photograph crisply -
honeysuckle buds are ready.

Some links.
Countryside Hedgerows: Protection and Management - the Government
Road Verges are a Refuge for Some of Our Rarest Plants - Plantlife
Plantlife's Campaign to Protect Wildflowers and Nature on Roadside Verges - Plantlife

If you too would  like to stick your foot somewhere and see what you can see - the link box for 'Stuck Foot Posts' will stay open till 7pm (UK time) on 25th May.

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THE OUT OF FOCUS BRIGADE

Snail on an apple tree twig.

Loose and Leafy is primarily for wild plants; street plants and plants of the hedgerows. (Insects too.) From time to time I visit an open-to-the-public kind of garden. Rarely do I show photos from an ordinary garden belonging to an ordinary house. I haven't for ages.

Blurry apple blossom

This afternoon, I was meant to be sitting outside, drinking tea, chatting, with music in the background. 

Music is difficult outside. You need it loud enough to appreciate but quiet enough not to bother neighbours. With a bit of fiddling around the sound was perfected . . . and it was all very pleasant.

This scented geranium leaf is not specially blurry but the light pointed it out.

But I can't sit long if there are things to see - even if I'm meant to be engaged in relaxed and friendly chatter. And this afternoon there was a special kind of atmosphere. A storm is brewing and it's taking a while to get to the break-out moment. Sometimes, before a storm, the atmosphere goes clear and everything, even at a distance - especially at a distance! - can be seen in more detail than usual.

Well, having built up your expectations . . . it wasn't that kind of light today. It was . . . not exactly hazy . . . but not quite as clear as it is most of the time either. And there were unaccountable little patches of brightness; a leaf here and another there which seemed to have been out to buy batteries and had turned on torches of their own.

Out-of-focus hosta leaf

So up I got, left the tea on the table . . . and pottered off to look at leaves . . . and things.

But, as I say, the light was odd.

I can't remember having posted out-of-focus-photos before. But this is what I'm doing here. I could pretend I was using some special technique or camera setting; but I wasn't. They just didn't come out right.

At the same time . . . by chance . . . they show what it was like this afternoon. Initially I chucked them aside. But I kept coming back to them. And I like them. There are different kinds of beauty.

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(All photos in this post taken on the afternoon of May 17th 2016.)

THE TALKING TREES - JULY UPDATE for TREE FOLLOWING 2014

I can adjust this photo to make the colours more true to life - less blue.
I tried it. I didn't like it.
I like this faded original better.

For all that I've encouraged you to follow a tree for a year when I set out to visit mine I almost always go with a heavy heart and the expectation of boredom. Why did I choose a pine? Pines don't 'do' anything The answer of course, is the same as the complaint - they don't 'do' anything. I wanted a challenge. But if I had to chose a challenge, why did that have to include the lowest branches being masses of feet above my head? I simply can't see what's up there.

I revisit the bark. I revisit the plants at its foot. I might find and insect in the road. I've done it all (yawn, yawn) - would there be anything new? How could there be.

What there was - was one of the most startling experiences I've had with any tree. And if I hadn't stood there wondering what to photograph, I would never have known . . . the very fact I had to stand there was what brought me something wonderful and new.

I'll save it for the end.

First though - I'm learning how frequently the grass is mown. The Chickweed (Stellaria media) which was there in March and April  has gone and a bramble has taken its place.

On the trunk - there's a yellow snail resting in a crack in the bark..

And here's the resin I can't stop being intrigued by. The sun is making a star on a globule.

And . . . and . . . when I get home and crop the picture I notice there's an odd white thing in the frame. I'ts probably about 4mm long. Anyone know what it is?

At the time though, I was so entranced by the globule I'd forgotten to take care of my feet - and stumbled over this cone.

Other cones I've found have been brown and closed. This one is green on the outside - and inside, if you look, the colour is a beautiful chestnut brown. A careful designer could have made this cone. I'd cover a sofa in its colours.

On it's back, where the cone was attached to the tree, you can see how the scales (scales? is this a dragon?) are arranged in whirls reminiscent of the snail on the other side of the tree.

But . . . but . . . something is happening. There's a strange and persistent clicking. I'd assumed a child was tapping something while walking down the road. I turn. There's no-one there. Maybe someone's playing with a clicker in a nearby garden. If so, it must be a specially interesting clicker because they won't stop. All the time they click and click and click. Then, all of a sudden, they click loudly in a burst. Clickclickclickclick . . . But it isn't a child. It isn't a clicker. It's the tree. I cross the road to where there are others like it. They are doing it too.

The only way I can record sound is to take a video. So here is our tree - not moving but 'talking'.

I imagine the cones are opening their scales to eject their seeds. You might want to turn up the sound to hear.

 Would you be interested in following a tree for a year? It's not too late to join. Click the emblem to find out how.

Click here for Tree Following posts written by other bloggers in July 2014.

All photos in this post - and the video - were taken on July 10th 2014.

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IF IT'S NOT ONE THING, IT'S ANOTHER

Thorncombe Woods, Dorset. April 13th 2014
Not autumn - but spring!
We'll come back to the mosses, fungi and lichens another day.

So many Tree Following posts! So many comments! It's good to see the conversations:

trees of the same kind are leafing at different times - sometimes within the same garden - why?

was Venice built on alder?

is ivy inevitably bad for a tree?

are hawthorn leaves and buds really as tasty as bread and butter?

New words - is your tree monoicous or dioicous? (Here's the Wikipedia link.)

April, for many trees, will be a month of particular change. By May - will all the snow have melted? Will blossoms have come and gone? Will southern leaves have fallen? How many bees will we have seen?

The next Tree Following link box will open at 7am (UK) time on 7th May and close 7pm (UK time) on the 14th.

* * *

New Forest, Hampshire.
April 17th 2014

Since the last post I've been pottering around Thorncombe Woods in Dorset and The New Forest in Hampshire - enjoying the mosses and lichens and fungi and flowers and insects . . . and (apart from a few familiar flowers) not knowing what any of them are. Some will appear in later posts - whether identified properly or not!

SLOWLY OUT OF THE WOODS AND INTO THE LIGHT

In the meantime, I keep finding myself looking at things other than what I've set out to find.

Hawthorn Trunk - April 13th 2014

I was planning to photograph bluebells in their variety - blue, white, pink, 'native' and Spanish - but found myself looking at the bark of a hawthorn tree instead

Snail on Alexanders (Smyrnium olusatrum) - April 13th 2014

which reminded me of the shell of an ordinary snail

Aprill 11th 2014 - See the pollen sack?

and while I was looking at snails, a bee came by

I've been trying to understand how a bee puts pollen in its sack - I think it's like this . . . With its front legs it churns pollen into the air so it lands on the hairs of its back. It then licks the feet on its middle legs to make them a bit sticky, picks up the pollen with them and pops it into the sack which is attached to its back leg. Its back leg works as a pollen press, bending to squash the pollen tight so it's delivered back to the hive in the form of compressed pellets.

Bee experts - please mark my homework! Is this a right description?

April 15th 2014

Another snail

(do you see it on the Red Valerian (Centranthus ruber)) . . .

Holly Blue butterfly (Celastrina argiolus) - April 15th 2014

and near this other snail there's a Holly Blue butterfly (Celastrina argiolus) on an Alexanders plant

and not far from the butterfly, caterpillars of the Brown Tail Moth (Euproctis chrysorrhoea) recently emerged from their gossamer tent and sitting around on brambles.

Which is where things go wrong. I never delete anything from my camera; ever; in case I delete something I don't want to delete. I'm good at mistakes. But videos take a lot of space, both on the card and on my laptop so . . . having taken several videos of caterpillars going in and out of their nest, and deciding one was so interesting I kept watching it over and over . . . and having decided it was so interesting and so clear and the camera held so steady I couldn't possibly want any of the other tries - I deleted it. I suppose there's virtue in consistency. Hey ho. Never mind.

So here's what remains -  a caterpillar pottering around in the remains of its nest. (April 16th 2014)

If it's not a bluebell, it might be bark; if it's not bark, it's a snail; if it's not a snail, it's a bee; if it's not a bee, it's a flower; if it's not a flower, it's a butterfly; if it's not a butterfly, it's a moth . . . or a twig . . . or a - there's always something to see!

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Links

Identify Your Bluebells (Natural History Museum - take a look in the sidebar of that page for more bluebell info.

Identify Snails (UK)  (Bug Blog)
Key To Snails Which Live in and Around Bristol! 

Identify Gastropods (USA)  (The ID Tools site may be very useful to readers in the USA - and can be fascinating for those of us who live elsewhere too.)

Brown Tail Moths - This Wikipedia entry is interesting on two scores. (Probably more but there are two which stand out for me.) First - it shows what the moth itself looks like (very pretty) and says to look out for it in July and August. Second - it shows the impact the hairs of the caterpillar have on human skin. Which leads to the question - why did the woman in the picture have caterpillars wandering around on her neck? 

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A WALK AT THE END OF WINTER

Peeping between trees in annoying rain.

For all that we are trying to celebrate spring, for all that blogs are full of hellebores and hopes of blossom, I feel we are straining at the leash. We aren't there yet. Daffodils may be nearly over but they flowered in late winter rather than in spring. There may be primroses on the hedgerow banks but they are like little beacons of what's to come. Birds may be noisier than they have been over winter but they aren't in full voice yet. Not here they aren't. Indeed, the mornings seem to be getting darker. Perhaps we will be skipping summer this year. The trees won't properly open their leaves or bother with autumn.

Plants, trees and creatures may have been knocked back by unusually strong winds and wet weather. I don't think it's the same all over the country. 

Horsetails - Equisetum arvens

Even only a few miles away from the sea I came across a bank of horsetails more advanced than I've ever found them here. And it's bound to be subjective too. Even if everyone else smells spring in the air - I don't. To me, it's still late winter. The light is almost consistently dull. Rain un-refreshing. The ground cold.

The pictures in this post are from last week - when beetles unexpectedly took over the blog. Nature can move fast at this time of year and has moved on a little since then. But I wouldn't want those of you who live in cities or in other parts of the world to miss out on this last fling of cold weather in the English countryside. But I do hope it will be the last of the dull-light posts. Or second to last! I've been to visit my tree-following tree - and, guess what? The sky was overcast. You'll see pictures of it on the 7th - which is the day after tomorrow - Monday

Are you too ready with your tree-following posts? I'm hoping the link box will come up of its own accord at 7 in the morning UK time. Scheduling can sometimes go wrong so, if it doesn't appear straight away, don't worry. I'll be hot on its heels to put it in manually.

March 25th 2014

Snails in this tree, partially protected by thick ivy stems, still seem to think it's winter.

Posts about Horsetails closer to the sea. You can tell by the dates they grow later here.

April 25th 2013

May 2nd 2011

AND REMEMBER!

I'm a Tree Follower

ARE YOU?

It's not too late to join us in following the progress of individual trees through the year - garden trees, park trees, hedgerow trees, wild trees.

Let me know if you'd like to be added to the list of tree-followers and put a link to your tree following posts in the link box here on Loose and Leafy on the 7th of every month. (Nobody is obliged to post about their tree every month but the more you post, the more we know - it's in your hands.)

SEE YOU ON THE 7TH!

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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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HERE COME THE OLYMPICS (IT'S SURPRISING WHAT YOU SEE BEYOND THE UNDERGROWTH!)

Do you know the story of Burglar Bill by Alan and Janet Ahlberg? When Burglar Bill goes into a house to steal, he takes more or less anything his eye falls on. "That's a nice toothbrush," he says. "I'll have that." As he dips in and out of other people's houses, liking the things he sees, he gathers up not only a toothbrush and a tin of beans but a box - with a baby inside. Never mind if you're seventy. You'll enjoy it.

Sometimes, when I go out with my camera, I have a similar approach. "That's a nice flower," I say to myself. "I think I'll have that!" Snap! Today, 'having that' turned up a surprising surprise.

Off I went.

That's a nice Convolvulus flower, I think I'll have that. Oh, look, there's an oak leaf, the ripening burrs of goose grass, blackberry leaves too.

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There's some nice Viper's Bugloss. I think I'll have that!

After all, it is the prettiest of flowers.

Plod, plod, plod. If the Council hadn't cut the verge when it did, there would have been lots. Never mind, here's a small crowd.

Here's a nice fly. I think I'll have that!

Here's a nice snail. I think I'll have that too!

Here are some nice flags . . . here are rather a lot of flags!

Beyond the Blackberries

I don't just take pictures of flowers, I like the colours and shapes of other things too. Boats and wires and sea and blackberry bushes and . . . flags!

I'm not an Olympic kind of person. The nearest I've got is to try, three times, to find out if the Olympic Torch will pass the Elderberry Bush we are following. Still not clear about this. It may . . . but, if it does, I think it might be in a van. Doesn't seem quite right - carting it about in a van. We'll see. Van . . .

Beyond the flowers of Rape Plants

. . . The Greek Olympic Sailing Team. (Above)

The Alexanders are going to seed . . . beyond them . . .

One of the German Olympic Sailing Team cars on the left.

And the Turkish Olympic Sailing Team are here too. (The white van.)

For a reason I can't explain, I can feel excitement rising. A row of flags. Vans and cars parked by the sea. Is it possible that the sight of these is making me look forward to it just a little?

The Olympians were visiting a local sailing club. The Sailing Academy, home base for the Sailing Olympics is over there, below the big lump of land which is Portland.

But Loose and Leafy is a nature blog so I'd probably better bung in . . . what's nice . . . Comfrey?

June 2nd

Yes, I think I'll have that!

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