Sunday, the Second Half.

Brrr…… Woke up to freezing rain and a cold wind. It was so different from Saturday. The rain carried on for most of the morning and at times it was falling as snow but it was too wet to lay.

This was not a day for straying out of doors but Fizz didn’t agree.

With zero chance of getting any nature shots I eventually gave in to the whining and decided to try my hand at a bit of “glamour” photography.

Well, you know that Fizz has got her own Facebook page now, I thought we could go out and get some cute and sweet photographs that she could use….

Things didn’t go exactly to plan… (The weather was against me)

There were the odd patches of blue sky but the wind didn’t let up..

Then we hit a bit of rough.

Her ball got stuck in the mud.

I suppose that at this point I could have used my opposable thumbs to help her out a bit but the journalist inside of me kicked in and I thought that I should record this moment.

Anyway she seemed to be doing quite well at retrieving the ball from the mud with her face.

She didn’t really need any help.

And that was the end of my career in “Glamour photography.”

It was good while it lasted.

Plantago lanceolata, The Ribwort Plantain.

A common plant of meadows and grass land, Ribwort Plantain is also a common lawn weed.

Short creamy, brown flower heads are carried on long ribbed stems and they can grow quite tall when competing with grasses. The flower stems are leafless, the leaves all stem from the base of the plant.

When the flower head first appears the closed bracts present a very dark, almost black face to the world.

       

The familiar ring of creamy, white stamens appears as the flowers start to open. They open from the bottom of the flower head first and the ring moves slowly upwards.

The small flowers are composed of four cream coloured petals with a brown central rib (technically the four petals should be called a corolla because they are not actually individual petals but fused together) The overall effect is of a light brown flower head surrounded by a ring of white stamens.

The stem is deeply ridged as are the lance-shaped leaves and depending on who you read, one of these ribbed features gives the plant the name Ribwort.

Taxonomy:

Kingdom: Plantae

Order: Lamiales

Family: Plantaginaceae

Genus: Plantago

Species: Plantago lanceolata

Wildflowers in winter.