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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STAND STILL AND POST

Alexanders flowers.
The sun hasn't yet brought out their scent but hoverflies, bees and wasps are exploring them already.

I doubt it's acceptable to say I'm fed up with green. But I am. I've been enjoying the starkness of winter; all those silhouettes. And although it's quite nice to see the little hawthorn leaf buds opening I'm feeling world weary enough to think 'Oh, them again.'. And for me to say 'Oh, them again' about hawthorn buds shows the depths to which I've sunken. They are beautiful; delicate and bright. But just at the moment, it's 'Oh, them again'. 

Hoverfly (Eristalis tenax) on Alexanders.

For my Stuck Foot Post I stood by Alexanders. People unfamiliar with them have said they'd be interested in knowing more. So I stuck my foot by a row that stretched away into the distance and looked to see what I could see. The plants by my foot were about two-foot high. Some on the other side of the path were much taller. By summer they will be four foot or higher.

There were more than Alexanders. There was fennel and the beginnings of Herb Robert (or one of those other plants whose leaves all look like geraniums except smaller). There were dandelion leaves and an open daisy. But apart from the daisy, everything was green. A mass of leaf by leaf, stem by stem green in a long, long, long, long, glossy green row. So I went with it and excluding all others, stuck to Alexanders for this post. If you can't beat it, join it. And having joined it, it's quite pretty really.

Alexanders Rust (Puccinia smyrnii) on a leaf.
Sometimes it looks disgusting.
Sometimes, as here, it looks interesting enough to become attractive in its own right.

Have you Stuck Your Foot somewhere recently? Stood for a moment without moving except for a slight sway or twist?

The stripy stems of Alexanders are so beautiful they make even me-in-a-bad-mood smile.

If you'd like to share a Stuck Foot Post - do add it to the box.

And if I can get myself to phone someone to fetch my laptop and mend it maybe I'll not feel so 'Oh, them again'y. But I'm currently stuck on that too. My laptop works sometimes. It's working now. At others it doesn't. But there's something special about the connection between an individual and his or her computer so I miss it while it's gone. And I keep postponing that call. I can borrow a friend's. But to use another's is as if I'm intruding on someone's heart.

Logic will reassert. When there's something more than green - when the blackthorn's in flower here as it is in other places . . . when white gives a break from incessant green (along with those occasional and irritatingly brash splashes of daffodil yellow and the cheeky primrose yellow of . .  of . . . of primroses) maybe then I'll look more kindly on green. (Oh, what a grump!)

Meanwhile, how about Sticking Your Foot somewhere and staying there long enough to see what you can see without moving? . . .  And share your post in the link box below?

The box will be open from 7am on March 21st and stay open till 7pm on the 25th (UK time).

If you'ld like to know more about Stuck Foot Posts and the dates for Stuck Foot Link Boxes

there's a

Page for Stuck Footers

P.S. Those who've been reading Loose and Leafy over time will have noticed I get struck down by a bout of anti-green-ness every spring and that every spring I get over it too.

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TIME TO PLACE YOUR FOOT

Choose somewhere.
Stand there.
See what you can see.
Say so.

Time for a Stuck Foot Post.

Here's more about it.

(Here's mine.)

Here's a link box for it.

Why don't you Stick Your Foot Somewhere and say what you can see?

(Box open till 7pm, the 25th January 2015)

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