MY STUCK FOOT POST FOR AUGUST

You might like to click the picture to see the teasel in the foreground close up.

This is all a rush. Very silly. I dashed out to choose a place for a Stuck Foot Post.

Nettles with their flowers silhouetted against gathering clouds.

I thought I might go to the sea and find sand and shells and seaweed and driftwood and all sorts of plants and objects. It was going to be very interesting and artistic - and we haven't been to the sea for a while. Erosion and cliff falls have seen to that.

But the moment I set out the weather began to glower. I had to choose somewhere to put my feet fast.

I saw some teasels in flower and stopped. I like the sea but I like teasels too.

This little flower was a bit pinker than it looks in the picture.

I grabbed some snaps and hurried home before the rain started.

Initially, I took this to be the flower of the Common Mallow - Malva sylvestris. But I was wrong. It's a Cranesbill. (But of what kind?)  I can never get these two straight! 

Brambles, brambles everywhere!

Blackberries are ripening. Some look deceptively tasty. They aren't yet sweet enough to eat - but there are lots of them this year.

These blackberry flowers were tucked under the hedge.

And when I got home? The rain came in a great squirt - as if someone had turned a hose on and was directing it directly at the windows while throwing pebbles at the same time. It didn't last long - but I'm glad I didn't go to the beach.

The idea of a Stuck Foot Post 

is that you choose a place and put your foot there.

Any old place will do.

You can choose it because it's familiar and you want to know it in more detail.

Or you can choose it at random.

Then you see what you can see.
Without moving your feet. Not once. Not even slightly!

There will be a Stuck Foot Post link box open for a week on Loose and Leafy -

starting on Thursday 31st August.

If you'd like to know more - there's a Page for Stuck Footers

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WHY NOT STICK YOUR FOOT?

Wherever you stick your foot you'll find something interesting.
If I hadn't stood still, I might never have noticed Bittersweet
(Solanum dulcamara)
hiding in pampas grass.
Bittersweet, like Deadly Nightshade is related to potatoes and tomatoes.

Rashly, I said I'd that on the 21st August I'd include a link box for 'Stuck Foot Posts'.

If I hadn't left my foot in the same place I wouldn't have noticed
a small buddleia hiding behind an equally small contoneaster.
(I think it's a form of contoneaster - but maybe it isn't?)

Why rashly? Because first I went away. Then I stripped everything off my computer so couldn't use it till enough was reinstalled to get it going again.

Standing beside a hawthorn three and looking up,
haws and sky catch the eye.
But there's gorse beyond.

And I think my heart and brain got left behind in a field in Wales so I'm a bit distracted and thinking I'd like another holiday.









But I'd like to encourage you to join me by sticking your foot for Wednesday - or some time in the following days - hence this post.

A stuck foot post is one in which you choose a place to stand, put your feet firmly in one place and see what you can see.

It can be a place chosen at random or a place well loved. What's best is to find what you wouldn't have noticed if you hadn't put your foot there.

Below the hawthorn so many plants I could have written a post by choosing nothing
more than one square foot of ground.
Prominent in this picture is a teasel plant. (Dipsacus.)
They're odd, teazles.
In their first year they stay small. In their second they grow tall.
And it seems you can spell their name any old way you like.
I like the 'teasle' way. Which is probably the wrongest.

There's more information on the special page for Stuck Footers. If you'd like to be added to the page as a blogger who occasionally writes a Stuck Foot post - let me know and I'll add a link to the page.

Stuck Foot link boxes will be sprinkled through the year.

Here are the dates
August 21st
November 21st
March 21st

* * *

Other News

There are two new links on the 'Identifying Things' page.

SEDUMS (Rebecca's Bird Gardens) - Sedums can be found as much growing in the wild as in gardens and their variety seems almost endless. Try looking on walls and between the stones in car-park gravel. (I was inspired to look around for Sedum information by Amanda's post about urban wild plants - Urban Plants at the Town Hall.

BRITISH BUGS (Shield Bugs and Co.) This is a site still under construction but there's already much there. The photos are wonderful. The creatures extraordinary. Many beautiful. (The British Bugs site is run by Tristan Bantock. You can find him on Twitter at - @BritishBugs 

* * *
Here's a Stuck Foot Post I wrote in July.

If you'd like to join me in writing a Stuck Foot Post for August . . .

there will be a link box on the 21st.

It will open at 7am (UK time) and close on September 1st at 7pm.

Loads of time to take part.

Easy to remember - 21st to the 1st.

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THE UNDERPASS - AN IRREGULAR POST

It's gloomy. It's cold. Shivery cold. We wrap up and rush by. Not stopping to notice the flowers at our feet.

Everything's grey. Traffic lights about the only cheerful sight around.

The highways department - local council - county council . . . don't know! Some department . .  has planted bushes across the bridge. They are thorny and currently leafless with the remnants of red berries here and there. When trees on the left come into leaf, the atmosphere of the place will change.

Cars and lorries and buses and bikes cross the pedestrian underpass.

If we want to cross, we must walk down. Past the bushes the council has put there to hold up the bank. Where ivy and teasels and cleavers and seedlings have found places to go.

Through the tunnel - grass at the other side.

Where there are thistles and things. (This picture is clickable. As well as thistles and grass and moss I've found in it buttercup and groundsel, daisies and what may be dead-nettles, a long leafed plant that might be plantain but I'm not sure. There's clover and possibly pimpernel - or maybe the beginning of cleavers. And several seedlings of something. There may be more. If you find them - say!)

There are daisies in the grass.

I mention  grass - but there are lots of other plants too.

And grass growing on the wall.

This lichen may be Lecanora campestris.

Lichen too.

The black cushions in white cups are its 'fruiting bodies'.

It may be dull. It may be February. It may be noisy and trafficy and not exactly scenic - but there's lots going on around town.





(All photos taken on 27th February 2013.)

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SPRING AND AUTUMN - CAN WE TELL THE DIFFERENCE?

Always, at this time of year, I go looking for what's left of autumn.

Usually, this means taking photos of leaves which have survived the winter, disintegrated flowers that never fell. That kind of thing. It's my version of spring cleaning.

And, as usual, at the moment I chose (which is another way of saying the only one I had available) the weather was dull. I fiddled around a bit, trying to make visible for the blog things which my eyes could barely make out in the gloom. Not a great success! So I turned the camera round the other way and decided on silhouettes instead. It was only when I got home and looked at the results that I decided the shapes I like so much weren't, on this occasion, the most interesting things there. What I had been seeing as the old stuff was really the new stuff held back from autumn and made ready and ripe for the spring. (Wonderfully scientific language on Loose and Leafy!)

I'd previously thought of dessicated blackberries as the fruits summer forgot.

I'd seen old willow herb shapes as just that - shapes left from when seeds fell.

Now, now, I see them as the winter's hoard - not for birds to eat, though with some, like teasels, this is indeed a side effect, but as plant's packets of seeds, ready to sow in the spring - and they've begun sowing.

This should not have been as much a revelation as it was. But that's the advantage of being ignorant. The pleasure when one's eyes open is immense.

Some Alexanders still have seeds in reserve.

Others  have let them all go.

Old Man's Beard (wild clematis) tends to look pretty euchy by now. The deliciously white fluff of autumn has turned into dirty gray drifts of ancient cotton wool - the kind left behind by the dustmen.

But, kept safe in the mess, the seeds are opening and dropping. They are tiny. Smaller than tomato pips.

And prickly balls of burdock are opening to release theirs.

See them? Quite large and lumpy inside.

Isn't autumn wonderful to save some of itself for spring?

* * *

All pictures were taken on 16th February 2013

Last year's post looking at the year before's leaves.

Silhouettes in January 2011

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THE END OF OCTOBER

You have no idea how many photographs I've taken recently, nor how many topics I've covered. How could you? I've not been churning out posts - and even this is late. Trouble is, I've been overwhelmed by choice. In the end, I've cheated and will simply present you with a small selection of autumn photos. After all, it is autumn. What more pressing subject could there be?

October 30th 2012

Chicory.

October 30th 2012

Chicory is one of my favourite plants. Its flowers get smaller as the season advances but they stand out specially against the aging vegetation beside the path. Some petals have fallen. Some seeds are forming.

October  15th 2012

Some parts of the landscape are still green.
Others are brown and white.
Autumn takes its time.

Teasels.

Teasels are another favourite.

October 30th 2012

Hawthorn.

Hawthorn doesn't 'do' autumn - not in the striking way of some other deciduous trees. Most of their leaves drop discreetly but there are prima-donnas among them, leaves which decide to do a dazzle all on their own.

October 30th 2012

Willow Herb.

This is one of the larger ones.

I photograph it in the same place every year.

Wonderful shapes it makes against the sky.

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The Follow Section

The most recent tree following posts . . .
from

Experiments With Plants
London Plane Tree

Down By The Sea
Willow

Anyone else?

And, finally - the view I'm following through the seasons.

Sandsfoot Castle
Ten to four in the afternoon,
Tuesday 30th October 2012

Have a good autumnal week.

(Or is it spring where you are?)

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You may also like my other blog

 - Message in a Milk Bottle

(a new photo every day)