the last of the summer wine

this tattered and exhausted butterfly is the end result of days of flying about in the sun, avoiding birds, rain, and high winds. I am not even sure what type of butterfly it is. One of the brown family (meadow or hedge).


Looks like I feel these days, and how Spot looks at his best, ragged.

AC Grayling

some of the thoughts of AC Grayling, philosopher and mordant wit.

A human lifespan is less than a thousand months long. You need to make some time to think how to live it.

The democracy of blogging and tweeting is absolutely terrific in one way. It is also the most effective producer of rubbish and insult and falsehood we have yet invented.

I am putting together a secular bible. My Genesis is when the apple falls on Newton's head.

I spent the first 13 years of my life in Zambia. In Africa you can't walk in the countryside and think. You might be eaten by a lion. You have to read instead.

My mother was a straight-up-and-down racist of a very marked kind. She used to laugh at the shopping lists the cook would try to copy out. It would never have occurred to her to teach him to read.

I would imagine Jesus was a kind of Jewish reformer. If you were looking for an equivalent to the figure you dimly perceive through the gospels it would probably be a Richard Dawkins.

I'm a vegetarian, but I wear leather shoes. Some people say that's a contradiction; I say I'm doing my best.

I used to be a terrible hypochondriac when I was young and a great reader of medical dictionaries. One day I realised that I was not actually frightened of terminal illness but of not getting done the things I wanted to get done.

I recently retraced on foot a famous journey that William Hazlitt made from Shropshire to Somerset to visit Wordsworth and Coleridge. I spent two weeks slogging through nettle beds before I realised the bastard had taken the coach.

When I was 14 a chaplain at school gave me a reading list. I read everything and I went back to him with a question: how can you really believe in this stuff?

I'm passionately in favour of legalising heroin and cocaine. But I despise people who depend on these things. If you really want a mind-altering experience, look at a tree.

I don't believe in killing animals, but I think President Obama did a justifiable thing in swatting a fly. Flies spread disease.

I have enough faith in statistics to know there must be conscious life on other planets.

Initials can be useful to hide behind. I once heard Jonathan Ross on the radio asking Kirsty Young who she had coming up on Desert Island Discs. When she mentioned "AC Grayling" Ross replied: "Oh, I know her."

Science is the outcome of being prepared to live without certainty and therefore a mark of maturity. It embraces doubt and loose ends.

I'm not sure it is possible to think too much. You don't refresh your mind by partying in Ibiza.

Life is all about relationships. By all means sit cross-legged on top of a mountain occasionally. But don't do it for very long.

Every professor of philosophy needs a nine-year-old daughter. Mine has a habit of saying, "Daddy, that is a very silly idea." She is always right.

from

Liberty in the Age of Terror, by AC Grayling, is published by Bloomsbury, 12.99

 

thanks to BRIAN CHAMPNESS, raconteur, author and authority on Bose

silver washed muscovy damselflies

These three pictures show a wild muscovy duck (or an escapee), a white legged damselfly, and a silver washed fritillary (male qv) feeding on bramble flowers in a glade in the woods. The white legged damselfly is uncommon (see link) but there were a lot about this morning, you can see the white leg grasping the head of the grass. We disgraced ourselves by rushing up to see what someone with a very large camera was photographing ... he was not much pleased to see his specimen fly away, and he didn't seem to want to take dog photographs, and he may not have much sense of humour. Mind you we were less intrusive than the little boy with the butterfly net.

more from the Tamar valley AONB

Inspired by the nightjar walk, we decided to explore the Tamar trails created by TV AONB. We started at Bedford saw mills and walked down to the Tamar and then up and down the trail that follows the river. The first photo shows a giant hogweed. It is described as an aggressive and nuisance invader and it is irritant to the skin, but nevertheless it is very impressive. The sheep are grazing in meadows of Blanchdown farm Unfortunately this means you cannot walk along the river bank at this point.


The water in the stream below has stained the rocks a vivid green I suspect this must be due to minerals washing out of mine workings higher up the valley. The foliage also looks an unnaturally bright green and that always makes me suspect that there are high concentrations of metals in the soil. (Is this the explanation, see link )?

nightjars and glowworms 2

Eventually, in the late dusk, we heard the unmistakeable and eerie sound of the nightjars "churring", and then very briefly we caught sight of one flitting through the trees with the characteristic wings up flight as it chased its prey of large moths. They went on chirring through rain, a distant thunderstorm, and a firework display laid on by the Horn of Plenty (which, I think, used to be the mine captain's house and is now an incredibly expensive but very fine restaurant and hotel). By this time, of course, it was so dark we wouldnt have been able to take a photograph of one even if it had landed on our hand. So the best substitute is the RSPB link where you can hear the amazing churring call. On our way back, stumbling through the dark we came across some glowworms. Sad to say we have never seen a glowworm before. As this blog is a mainly a pictorial account of our life, Spot insists that I include the photograph of the glow worm ...it's the green bit on the left. A case of nature imitating William Scott (see earlier blog).
So we would like to thank Richard Hibbert, bird expert, and Ruth Davies (the AONB information officer) for a very special and enjoyable evening.

nightjars and glowworms

We went on a bit of an expedition last night. Under the auspices of the Tamar valley AONB (the man in the picture on the link is Furgus Parsons, who owns Spot's grandmother, lurcher Bracken, and Cassie's brother Byron, and he made our wonderful walnut dining room table), we went for a trip to the site of the Devon Great Consuls mine, once the largest copper and arsenic mine in the world (and probably the galaxy).



The site is like something from Mars, a great arsenical spoil heap in a barren landscape.


The ravaging of the landscape by the aristocracy has had the one serendipitous effect of creating a heathland habitat suitable for the elusive and mysterious nightjar. And even the toxic spoil tip has been used by sand martins as a nesting site. It was too dark to capture the martins as they flew in and out of the small holes in the side of the tip.

floral butteflies

the yellow flower at the top is meadow vetchling, the lower and rather exotic picture is of a poppy (not wild as far as I can tell).

lack of punctuation

the air is full of butterflies especially ringlets and meadow browns, possibly because grasses have grown exceptionally well this year. This colourful specimen is a comma, showing only its upper wings (the eponymous mark is on the other side).

down at Downderry 2

Spot and Max under the soft cliffs at Downderry that are fast eroding into the sea, watching the gulls body surf, dreaming of being Jonathan Livingston SG himself. These days most gulls seem to hang out on farmland or close to take-away fast food outlets. I guess these are the nostalgic ones who like the occasional dip by the shore, the lonely sea and the sky.... and a star to steer them by.

down at Downderry

the red flower at the heart of the head of a wild carrot. It is not always very easy to see with a casual glance.

woodpecker lunchbar

one of our favourite garden visitors. This one looks like a juvenile, and there may well be a woodpecker nest in one of the larger trees in the garden. He was pecking away happily for some time at insects in the wood It is one reason why we like to keep dead wood in the garden. As I type (Spot's paws are too big for him to do his own typing) the sun is breaking through the clouds and we are set for another lovely sunny day ... apologies to all our faraway cousins for harping on about the good weather but it is very unusual down here in the South Wet.

river crossing

the Tamar, above Endsleigh, standing on a bar where the Inny comes out. The water levels are very low.

summer is here

Above ... A patch of slender St John's wort mixed in with foxgloves, and below a newly minted marbled white fuelling on some bramble juice.

more good things

it is that time of year again with Wimbledon, strawberries and Pimms. These wild strawberries may not be as big as their cultivated cousins, but they are incredibly intensely flavoured and sweet. As a general rule the beginning of Wimbledon, and the Glastonbury festival herald prolonged periods of dull wet weather. Just for once it is warm and sunny. We will have to install a hammock and chill out, watch the tennis (Spot would like to be a ball dog) and eat wild strawberries.

great pleasures in life

great pleasures in life, a little BBQ, hot dogs, very old armagnac (the oldest thing in the house) and vin rose. The armagnac has been decanted into a superior brandy bottle because the cork had given up the struggle. Spot has always wanted to post a letter from the place where the armagnac was bottled.

more from the meadowsweet

meadowsweet is coming out everywhere now, and with valerian and honeysuckle, fills the byways with the heavy scent of summer. Do you long for the times when the only air freshener was a stack of meadowsweet, and a hot dog?

at the valerian

a horse fly, refuelling for a day's torment and biting

foxglove lane

It has been a very good year for foxgloves. The hedgerows are full of them. We have moved on from blue to purple and mauve.

not much is happening this side of the Atlantic. At least it is not raining. So here are some geraniums (ii? ia?) and a goldfinch on a peony in our garden jungle.
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tufted vetch and flea beetles

the tufted vetch in close up and the flower showing clearly that it is in the pea family. I love the light blue of the lower lip of the petals. And below some flea beetles (species uncertain) procreating on an appropriately named dock leaf.


ps maybe dead nettle leaf beetle chrysolina fastuosa, found thanks to the wonders of Google image

navelwort

navelwort (also know as wall pennywort) is something of an abundant local speciality. It gets its name from the rounded leaves with a central dimple where the stalk is attached. Valerian (below) and hedge woundwort (at the bottom) are also out which means summer has arrived. From now on the hedgerows tend to become overgrown with ferns and grasses, and much of the colour drains away. And of course it starts raining.

star struck

a patch of marsh (probably as this is wet grassland) or lesser stitchwort looking like the stars they are named for (stellaria). With a few blue stars

brown brushstrokes

only (!) a meadow brown, but they are very frisky and getting close when surrounded by inquisitive canines requires patience and dogged determination

green brushstrokes

somewhere in this green dream there is a grey wagtail

keeping one's head above water

a young heron in a sea of grass, and Chairwoman Mao crossing the Devon Yangtse

Venterdon Red Sox

a touch of red in the pollen basket; this bee is obviously a dedicated follower of fashion.

two yellow brush strokes

we saw a pair of grey (but yellow) wagtails flying around the rough patch of water at this spot on the Tamar catching insects, and this newly emerged golden ringed dragonfly in the meadows.

four new things

one female chaffinch, slightly stunned, the perfect English rose, clematis, and the head of borage about to flower, the leaves of which with Pimms, strawberries and tennis minus rain will go to make a perfect English summer.

three peony pieces

the red peonies in our garden, plus key workers