Hi Ho Hi Ho Holiday

It's the best day of the year. The bluebell woods are in full bloom. Two Hungarian vizslas from Rezare are ambling over for a chat. The butterflies and damsel flies are out. The sun is shining. What more could one want.

flood plains

 When the Tamar floods it creates a new channel through the woods below Carthamartha. The debris contains many of the plastic tubes used to protect the mixed deciduous saplings that have been planted out up stream (top picture). The floor is scoured clean, revealing the first signs of this years crop of purple toothwort (looking very dental!)

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red flags

No further comment required ? The new robber barons are enclosing the land, and the peasants can go starve. Be a banker, or a lawyer, make your money gambling with other people's money, contribute nothing, manufacture nothing, use their money to buy their land, hunt, shoot and fish. Just keep them out. Power only speaks to money.

butterfly counting

It was British butterfly counting day today, so we went to our favourite meadow and walked through it for 15 minutes. The brambles have almost finished flowering, but the meadow is full of knapweed and in a few days will be a blaze of purple. Like last Sunday we saw many species, including three that were absent last week, the common blue, the peacock (top photo, very resplendent indeed), and the holly blue (bottom photo).This is only the second time in 5 years that we have seen and photographed a holly blue. There were ringlets, various whites and meadow browns beyond count, and a dozen large silver washed fritillaries.