the last of the summer wine 2

Hemp agrimony, the third of the tall hedgerow plants with large flat or daisy like flowers to appear after meadowsweet and valerian, and before orpine. The forest of long white styles is characteristic of this plant which is much favoured by butterflies as summer goes on. Named eupatorium after Mithradates VI Eupator, King of Pontus in 120BC.

pink hogwash

a spotted longhorn beetle on some pink hogweed (it is usually a greyish white). Hogweed seems to attract a wide range of unsavoury types including horse and other biting flies. The better class of umbellifer attract butterflies and bees. Why?

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 )?