Wallflowers and dianthus

Posted on April 21, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Art, Environment, Gardening, Life, Plants, Spode, Staffordshire, Stoke-on trent, Urban greeningLeave a comment

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I shared this a few days ago as part of a group of photos but I came back to it because I loved the vibrant colours. It goes with my mood today. Gold wallflowers and pink dianthus I think are the types of flowers.

An artist at Spode planted and looks after this area just outside the spode studios. They always cheer me up when I go in. To see them in the middle of industrial delapidation lifts my spirits.

On the road that passes the site there was a project called greening Stoke where various shop fronts and bits of derelict land were planted up with wild flowers. They are still growing. Good to see green in the urban landscape.

Butterfly

Posted on April 19, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Blogging, Butterfly, Environment, Garden, Ivy, Life, Organic garden, Shrubs, SpringLeave a comment

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Look closely and you should be able to see a tiny brown speckled butterfly on the ivy. I don’t know what species it is but it’s good to see it fluttering around.

It means that spring is really here and that our garden is working. It might look like shrub land but it’s all organic, it’s meant to be a wildlife garden. We even had a hedgehog in autumn. Anyway must get on.

I promised myself I would paint.

Posted on April 15, 2019April 15, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Acrylic on canvas, Art, Barn owl, Environment, Life, Painting, Photography, Staffordshire wildlife Trust, Wildlife4 Comments

Today I started a painting for the first time in months. I saw an image by photographer David Tipling of a Barn Owl from a Staffordshire Wildlife Trust bookmark and just had to paint it.

Why the owl? The photographer has captured it in flight beautifully The sinuous curve of its wings seems to scythe through the air. Its face is both impassive and intent.

I hope the photographer does not mind me painting his image.

Uncertainty

Posted on April 10, 2019April 10, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Environment, Gravity, Quantum, Space, Trying to understand physics, TV Science?Leave a comment

Watching a programme about gravity and quantum physics. The very big and the very small…

Hard to follow. There is apparently a fundamental problem in our understanding of the universe. General relativity explains Stars and galaxies. Quantum mechanics explains Atoms. But when you get to black holes the laws of nature fail.

Today Nasa published the very first image of a real black hole. Before today any images were just illustrations or mock ups.

The singularity at the centre of a black hole is apparently the same sort of thing as the singularity at the beginning of the universe.

The programme shows how something called quantum gravity explains the universe. Now we have seen a real black hole they may be able to take the theories further.

I’m leaving this now. I don’t understand!

Wasp

Posted on April 10, 2019 Posted in Cat, UncategorizedTagged Blog, Blogging, Buzz, Cat, Chase, Environment, Garden, Insect, Life, Sting, Wasp2 Comments

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Wasp! I’ve stood on one and been stung before now. I don’t like them but I can live with them, except when they built a nest in between some bricks and started coming out into the kitchen when they emerged. I got up one morning and there were a few wasps flying round the kitchen. Two many to catch and I didn’t have any fly spray so I had to hoover them up in the vacuum cleaner. I felt guilty about it. Then over the next week we had more every morning. I had to book pest control in the end.

Now years later I just had a huge wasp fly into the living room. It must have come in from the garden when my partner went outside.

The cats ears pricked up and he started looking up and jumping onto cupboards to try and catch it. I don’t think chewed wasp would be good for him. Then it flew onto the window behind a net curtain.

I shouted my partner as I could not reach. A plastic tub and a magazine were used to trap it, now its free flying around outside.

Phew! Strange how insects can be so upsetting. Wasps are useful for eating pests and pollenation. And thankfully I didn’t have to vacuum it up!

Plastic in my garden

Posted on April 6, 2019April 6, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Blossom, Environment, Garden, Green, Life, Plants, Plastic, Spring, TreeLeave a comment

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My partners been out putting seeds in the garden, pottering with plant pots and sitting in a chair in the sun.

Two magpies are trying to pull twigs off a buddlea Bush, they are building a raggadey nest in the top of one of the trees. They managed to break off 3 or 4 twigs while we watched.

It was so nice I decided to take a few photos. The first is the chair my partner was sitting in. He didn’t want his photo taken second is the cherry tree. With blossom buds about to burst. The third is another tree at the side of the garden, with a great big waving piece of white plastic in the top of it! I don’t know how it got there but I think it must have blown up in a storm. It doesn’t look like a plastic bag, maybe some plastic wrapping? Things are getting green. We need to wash plastic flower pots to reuse them, but I caught my partner burning perfectly good ones! Grr….

Wild and wet

Posted on April 5, 2019April 5, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Cold, Damp, Environment, Grey sky, Life, Pantomime, Rain, Umbrella, Weather, Wet, WindLeave a comment

Looking out of the side window yesterday, you can see why I didn’t want to go outside! It being the 4th of April, I was hoping things would dry and sunny. But no. On the TV there were photos of snow in Shropshire. The weather was swirling round a hook of cloud scooting across the British Midlands.

Last night when we went out to the theatre the wind and rain were awful. There were gusts of wind that blew my umbrella inside out. I could have thrown it away but despite the supports being bent out of shape the fabric kept the freezing wind off us. My partner bent down and walked behind me…. If we had been in costume we could have been a pantomime horse!

Today there was sunshine this morning but its turned very dark and cloudy. I’m guessing it’s going to tip it down again soon.

Nest building

Posted on April 1, 2019April 1, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Bird, Branches, Environment, Garden, Magpie, Nest, Nest building, Trees, Twigs2 Comments

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We have a couple of magpies in the garden. They have decided to build an untidy nest in the top of a tall sycamore tree. I know their reputation for collecting things to line their nests with, but today I witnessed both of them picking up twigs over twice their body lengths. I watched the resulting tangle with amusement. Both of them had the long twigs held horizontal in their beaks. The trouble was, like a dog with too long a stick trying to get through a door, the sticks got caught on branches as they tried to fly up to the nest. Once the twig fell back to the ground and it took the magpie a few minutes to get it firmly back in its beak and properly balanced.

Seeing them both high in the tree top trying to tuck bits into their nest was fascinating. I do worry for other local birds as they have been known to steal baby birds but I do admire their tenacity.

Titchy play: Monster

Posted on April 1, 2019April 1, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Comedy Sketch, Creative writing, Dialogue, Environment, Fun, Humour, Penkhull, Penkhull mystery play, Playlet, Sea, Seaside, Stoke-on trent, Titchy theatre, TravelLeave a comment

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I wrote three little plays for the Titchy Theatre yesterday. They were read out at the show. I will post them here one a day.

Monster (tourist to reporter – look south or some such channel)

Reporter : so where did you see it?

Tourist : down by the quay, you know, the harbour?

R: and was it big?

T: well… It was as big as a boat, no… A ship

R: what did it look like?

T: er…. It had glowing all over it

R: what sort of lights?

T: Well… Yellow-ish. Like Glowing yellow eyes, and I think it had huge teeth too!

R: why?

T: it seemed to have a grill or something over its mouth, but you could see light shining through… You know… Glowing like an alien?

R: did it make a noise?

T: yes, a very low humming, and a metallic, clanking noise.

R: so…. how do you feel?

T: very scared. I’ve never seen anything like it before

R: can I ask you where you’re from?

T: oh yes. Stoke-on-Trent

R: so … Have you ever been to the seaside before?

T: oh yeah. You know, magaluf, Malaga, Ibetha.

R: and there was nothing like this there?

T: No… Just always sunny, and at night we went off and partied… The other thing I remember is this long wailing noise! I mean, it was foggy, so I could only sense the looming figure the Monster…. .!!

R: OK. Well…. We checked with the Coast Guard… .

T: Yeah??

R: the wailing noise was from the lighthouse foghorn.

T: Oh

R: And the big, dark, lit-up ship thing.

T: Yes?

R: Was a car ferry…….

Christine Mallaband-Brown

Helibores

Posted on March 31, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Environment, Flowers, Garden, Helibores, Life, Plants, SpringLeave a comment

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Another plant I love in the spring are Helibores. The flowers range from bright white, pale green, pink and green and deeper pink. Sometimes the flowers are upright and you can get double species, but mainly their flower heads droop down and you need to lift up the flower to see its true beauty. There are sometimes dappled patterns and flecks of darker colours. The centre of the flower is quite prominent, backed by a slightly darker centre.

The leaves are deep green and shiny, sometimes five lobed. The borders are sometimes slightly serrated. I don’t know all the types of Hellibores there are but if you want an unusual plant that flowers early in the year and keeps flowering into April then they are worth getting. They offer some food for early insects. If you like your tulips and daffodils you could also try these. They are easy to keep and I grow mine with pulmonaria which come up a little bit later.