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

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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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IN THE GRAVEYARD - OCTOBER 2013

As part of my 'wild plants that grow in cities' project I recently visited an urban Churchyard.

When I was younger, I used confidence as a power shield. I wasn't stupid enough to imagine this made me invincible but it worked pretty well.

Hanging in my cupboard over the years, un-needed, underused, it's grown threadbare and moth-eaten. But that day I suddenly felt I could do with it again for when I went through the gate I realised the wooded area behind the Church was full of raised voices. I faltered. It was a good guess, I reckoned, that there would be bodies attached to the voices and they might not be friendly bodies.

I'm not a linguist but the voices sounded Polish. There are a lot of Poles in England nowadays. All the dentists at my local practice are Poles and every one of them has been a darned site better at dentistry than any dentist I've had before. They seem to be remarkably adept at treatment without pain. None the less, however good Polish dental schools are it seemed unlikely that these graveyard woods would be full of Polish dentists haranguing each other so, as I said, I faltered. All I could think of was that these were migrants who hadn't found work and had set up an encampment. Would they be happy to have an English blogger wandering through their dispute? I never found out. For all the time I was there loud voices floated from among the trees but I never approached and they didn't emerge to approach me.

I stood for a moment, should I walk forward? It was the third Churchyard I'd tried in an hour. The others hadn't had graveyards - just tarmac, gravel and well tended flower beds. So I gathered up the tatters of my shredded confidence, drew them round me - and walked on.

Within a few steps, I was, once again, disconcerted. A young couple rose from a grassy area between graves. They seemed to be pulling on their real clothes as firmly as I was tugging at my invisible protection. Forward still? Yes. Why not? I slid my eyes aside and walked purposefully up the slope. Steps. A tomb. Plants growing along the plinth. Great!

I was just about to crouch down to get them in frame when two young drinkers clattered round from the other side with cans and a bicycle. Now what? We greeted each other cordially. I explained what I was doing. They asked. if I would like them to move out of the way. I said all was fine. So they sat chatting with each other while I crawled around with my camera. (That's one of the troubles with plants. They mostly grow on the ground.)

I took my pictures, thanked them (after all, I had intruded on their space) and went back down towards the gate. Should I leave? No!

Skirting the voices among the trees, I found bittersweet (Woody Nightshade) on the edge of the wood.

And fungi near a contoneaster seedling (do you reckon?)

and more fungi. These yellow ones were several inches across. I didn't touch them to find out if they are merely shiny or slimy too.

I'm not going to attempt IDs.

But . . . after photographing more graves and ivy and a sweet chestnut shell . . .

I hurried away for the train back home - full of puzzles, pictures and a cheerful sense that, with a little bit of work - a stitch here, a patch there - my old and tattered cloak of (almost) invincibility could possibly be worn once again with pride.

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