this year's first comma, along, all of a sudden, with lots of other species. It must be the warm weather.

working for a living

like a scene from the Auvergne, and just to prove we are very rural, a picture of one of my cousins (aka wolf according to Babe) driving newly shorn ewes and their unshorn lambs via Anvil Close to pastures new.

dragonflies and robins

the top two pictures are close ups of the a female dragonfly (broad bodied libellula) which is quite common around here but always impressive when you see one. The bottom picture is of some ragged robin and visitor. Usually there is a lot of ragged robin in the marshy meadows by the Inny, but this year it is very sparse.

more blue than green

the startling blue flowers of green alkanet, with the white eye in the centre, surrounded by the paler blue of field and germander speedwell.

more missed opportunities

the bright yellow flower of cow-wheat, with its peculiar collar of hairs like a fur stole, and favoured food of the heath fritillary (none seen yet this year) and below the pretty flower of bastard balm, favourite food of bees.

on the road today

hedgerow painting by Mother Nature, and below the mysterious innards of the comfrey flower. (Linnaeus, the great cataloguer and botanist, was famous for his interest in things scatological, and the interiors of flowers are really very lascivious, but it is hard to find anything meaningful in comfrey's latin name, symphytum officinale ....unless it is a subtle reference to, well only doctors and physiotherapist will know).

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