A little tease

Puppies

Whoops - I meant poppies!

Mauve flowers, orange butterfies

I was out emptying the dog this morning and it seemed to me that there are a lot of mauve flowers and orange butterflies about at the moment. There was also a dragonfly but that was more powder blue - sorry about that :), oh, and one of the butterflies is more brown than orange.

Dandelion

Dandy Lion by borogove13 on DeviantArt

No, no, no, no! not Dandy Lion, dandelion, the yellow flower, like this -

 

But it does sound the same. The name comes from the french 'dent de lion'  after the shape of the leaves which are supposed to look like lion's teeth. The entire plant is edible (if that is what you want!) and has been used in herbal medicine. It grows everywhere, has cheery yellow flowers and a wonderful seed head which we knew as a dandelion clock when we were kids. You blew the seeds off and the number of blows it took to blow them all off told you the time. It didn't work but it was a good excuse for why we were late home :).

My mother told me it made you wee but never told me how. Does looking at it make you wee? sniffing it? She never said any more. It turns out that it does make you wee, it is a diuretic. The only other bit of folklore I got from my mother was that poppies give you a headache. Again, no explanation. She probably told me that to stop me experimenting and discovering opium!

It is a sad day

Which is a shame because it is a warm sunny day today, but my camera died :(

It was not unexpected, it had been getting quite grumpy for some time. Sometimes it ignored me when I told it to focus, other times it would change mode to shutter priority (which I very rarely use) all by itself. It had had a muddy shower from a wet dog in Dorset a while back and was beginning to groan when focusing. It had also started to rattle which, in my experience, is never a good sign! Now all it takes is photos of 100% white. The sensor has failed somehow, and maybe terminally.

It was old and battered but it was a dear friend and I can't find anything quite like it and I can't really afford to anyway so, I have nothing to lose - I have to try open camera surgery. I don't expect will be able to fix it, cameras are horribly complicated inside and even if I can get inside far enough to find the problem there is then the problem of putting it all back together. In memory I will show some of the last pictures it took.

I have been told* (you know who you are) that my pictures are too small so I've made them a bit bigger. What do you think?

* but not in comments - sigh.

 

lambing time again

 

Sadie in one of her more usual poses. She is trying to find rabbits. Eventually I had to pull her out by the tail.

 

Home made lanterns - from old tin cans

 

Donkeys

 

On top of Uplow Hill*

* Not its real name. I don't want everybody to know all my favourite places!

 

Sadie - the whole dog!

 

Flowers

 

More flowers

 

and finally - a flower

Nothing else to show, but I may drag out some old pictures one day. Sad day :(

Eclipse

Will you see a solar eclipse tomorrow (20th March 2015)?

 

click image to go to original website for more information

If you live within the dark green area you will see at least a partial eclipse. If you live inside the dark blue area then you will see a total eclipse. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be much land there but I guess there is ice as you get closer to the pole. At the pole the sun will be just on the horizon - all day, it is equinox time again.

In London the times (GMT) are:
Begins: Fri, Mar 20, 2015 at 8:25 AM
Maximum: Fri, Mar 20, 2015 at 9:31 AM
Ends: Fri, Mar 20, 2015 at 10:41 AM


Go HERE to find out times for your location

I meant to do a post today but...

... I ran out of time.

I am away for a while so my dog will have to stay in kennels with a load of other dogs and a bunch of very caring carers. I will miss her.

Anyway, have a few pics from our walk on the beach today.

a boat

and some more beach huts...

and finally, introducing my friend Sadie

Lazy wind

It was a lazy wind blowing, too lazy to go round so it goes straight through you. Although it was quite sunny the wind made it feel very cold. I was hoping to go to the beach but I chose the shelter of the woods instead.

The bluebells are beginning to peek up through the leaf litter promising a nice display in a couple of months time. At this time of year there is still quite a lot of light in the woods because the trees are still not in leaf.

It picked out the lichen on this dead branch rather nicely.

The snowdrops are looking really good just now.

And today I saw frog spawn. It looks as if it has been accumulating for 3 or 4 days. Unfortunately for the frogs this is not a particularly good place to spawn because it is a ditch and will dry out if there is no rain for a while.

Birds are singing and some are collecting material for nesting. The world is coming back to life.

Back to the beach

Well, it was a nice day and I'd checked out the trailer and bike yesterday so I took my favourite dog to the beach again. There was a cool North breeze but the sun reflecting off the sea made it much warmer than I expected. It was a lovely walk

There was a bunch of oystercatchers waiting for the tide to go out. They let me get unusually close.

Turnstones show what wonderful camouflage they have.

The waves coming into the wind caused a lot of spray, especially when the wave hits he groyne

And a crow sitting on the groyne post. There are always crows on this beach. They harass the gulls into dropping their food so they can steal it.


And finally

The beach hut shot!

About me

Today I thought I would tell you a little bit about me.

I have a dog that I walk every day, 

    and I write a blog about it.

Philosophy

Now there's something to think about

Mud

A sign of things to come. When the sun is warm and spring is in full flow these little shoots will be bluebell flowers. It is just as well that these pictures don't come with sound, we were 50 metres from a dual carriageway.

It is said that "When gorse is out of blossom, kissing's out of fashion.". It's lucky that it's in flower all year then.

Ah, mud!

This path is notoriously muddy in winter.

Before winter 2013/4 this was dense woodland. The storms made the ground very wet and then the wind blew most of the trees down. They have only recently started removing the fallen trees.

Now that is what I call mud!
These tracks are from bringing the timber out. Each tyre track is about 1 metre wide.

And this is where they stacked it.

As you can imagine, we brought quite a lot of mud home with us!