Hanging basket

Posted on October 17, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Bee friendly, Colours, Environment, Flowers, Garden, Gardening, Hanging baskets, Life, Nature, Nursery plants, Plants, ShedLeave a comment

It’s mid October and the baskets just keep flowering. This ones on the garden shed, another sheltered spot. I would recommend ordering them from a small nursery or farm, they generally end up filled with more and different flowers that have matured more by the time you get them. I usually ask for lots of colour and the lady that plants them up will put in lobelia, begonias, fushias, trailing petunias, and other flowers I can’t remember the names of. Then we fill our own baskets with pelagoniums, small sunflowers and trailing tomato plants (this year). I hang baskets one below another. Then set up pots on the wall and the ground. Finally we’ve grown a few, like this one, on the shed. Those have had nasturtium seeds put in them and have given a lovely late flowering display. In all the sadness of this year they have given me great joy.

Hedgehog photos

Posted on September 27, 2020 Posted in Cat, UncategorizedTagged Abandoned cat, Catfood, Environment, Evening, Feeding, Food, Garden, Hedgehog, Life, Mammal, Nature, Night, PhotosLeave a comment

The hedgehogs are about tonight eating catfood again. I quietly opened the back door and saw one of them eating the catfood I’d left out for the abandoned cat. When it realised I was there it slowly scuttled off up the yard. When I looked again later all the cat food had gone. When the abandoned cat arrived I gave him a couple of pouches of wet cat food to make up for him missing supper.

I love out hedgehogs, I’m hoping they will weigh enough to survive winter. I think they are living in the back of the shed. My hubby says he hears snuffling in there late at night.

Some of this years pears

Posted on September 25, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Environment, Fruit, Gardening, Growth, Life, Nature, Pear tree, Pears, Sweet, Tasty, Twenty years, WoolworthsLeave a comment

We bought the pear tree as a small sapling from Woolworths about twenty years ago. It’s grown since then and every year it has had a bigger crop of pears on it. This year there must have been fifty. The tree has tipped over because of their weight and possibly the wind, so we’ve had to prop it up. The bark is cracked and coming off in places, and it suffers from black spot, but the pears are delicious. Some of them rotted on the tree, possibly from being pecked by birds. We’ve got most of them off the tree now and are sharing some with friends.

Bee photo?

Posted on September 24, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Bee?, Bees, Environment, Flowers, Hover fly?, Life, Nature, Photo, Plants, Pollinate, Save the planet, World5 Comments

I don’t know what species it is, I can’t get very good closeups with my phone but I think it’s a Bee, however it could be a hover fly? The back end of it doesn’t look fuzzy enough. But it has yellow and black bands on it. So does anyone know?

Whether bee or fly, at least its something that pollinates plants, and that’s what we need to protect in the world. Imagine a world without pollinating insects? There would be a lot less fruit and vegetables unless we were to hand pollinate or create machines that could do it. But we don’t need that. We need to protect what we already have! Banning pesticides that kill bees, like nicotioides. Farming responsibly and safely. Its a difficult balance. But we must make it happen.

Dragonfly

Posted on September 14, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Adjustments, Dragonfly, Environment, Insect, Life, Nature, Random, Spirit animalLeave a comment

My friend found this in her house today. She said it was like her spirit animal. I loved the idea. She let it fly free. I wish I had seen it. I’ve had to adjust the exposure and colour to try and make it visible because it was a very dark image originally. The structure of a dragonfly is amazing. It looks like the bones of a spine with a skull and wings.

In hedgehog news….

Posted on September 12, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Environment, Fun, Garden, Growing, Hedgehogs, Life, Nature, News, Nighttime, Visitors, Wildlife4 Comments

We have been seeing our hedgehogs for about a month and a half now. They either feed by the back door or in our shed late at night. My hubby goes out most nights to look for them and they will be on the aths round the garden eating worms they have grubbed up or in the shed. We’ve got sand on the shed floor so we’ve seen their paw prints. They were using it as a latrine but that seems to have stopped. When they eat and drink they often knock the bowls over. We put out hedgehog food but they much prefer the dry and wet cat food that the stray/abandoned cat has. (we are still trying to get him in the house). There was one big and one small hedgehog, but after over a month of nightly visits they are both big now! It’s great to have wildlife in the garden.

Can I see an elephant?

Posted on September 6, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Animals, Cloud, Elephant, Environment, Extinction, Imagination, Life, Looks like, Nature, Plants2 Comments

Strange towering cloud seen on our walk. Looks like someone walking with their hands being them and with an Elephants head, trunk raised.

Will our children and our children’s children even recognise Elephants, or Lions and Tigers and all the other animals (and plants) that are becoming extinct? When the last Elephant in the wild has its tusks hacked off by trophy hunters or illegal poachers, will someone notice or care?

Man sets himself up as the most important animal. But that means we should care for what lives on Earth. Not destroy it.

Fern fronds

Posted on September 4, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Carboniferous, Environment, Evolution, Ferns, Gardening, Life, Nature, Random, Silica, ToxicLeave a comment

Ferns are ancient plants. They predate flowering plants. You can find fossils of them in the carboniferous era. They propagate, not by seed, but by spores which are held on the underside of the leaves. In sporediea. They are discharged into the air and are blown away by the wind. From there they create tiny ferns, I can’t remember the exact details because its over forty years since I learnt about them. All I can say is I must look it up. I do know they have silica in their cells and can be toxic to cattle and sheep.

Ferns are beautiful, they have lovely spiral fronds which then unfurl. There are different colours shapes and sizes. I know that some people have gardens full of ferns. I obviously need to find out more.

Tree

Posted on September 2, 2020 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged Drawing, Environment, Life, Nature, Poem, Poetry, Sea, Sketch, Sketching, Tree, Woman artist2 Comments

Tree, look after me,

Let me climb up and see

Where the world ends

Where the sea sweeps

High views

Cliff edges,

Sand bars

Tree you let me see far

Over hill and vale

Into the distant waves

Crashing across the earth’s face

Like tears and mountains,

Flying spray

Blowing limbs from the tree

In a gale.

Life gets everywhere

Posted on September 1, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Dandelion, Earth, Environment, Growth, Life, Photo, Plant, Random, Spode, Time2 Comments

Even iin the cracks of windowledges or steps. This was growing at Spode last year. Not pretty, but green, seed heads developing, waiting to be dandelion clocks.

Next year there might be ten new plants, then a hundred the year after. Not exponential, but a creaping greening. A creating of new life, roots diving deep, breaking up the earth. If only we could embrace nature more? Not kill it but give it a helping hand. We know its wrong to harm the planet. Why do we persist.

Mallaband-Brown

Tag: Environment