Frosting the Dog

Well, it wasn’t really much of a frost and I think we may have to put off declaring a “State of Emergency” for a day or two.

There was some frost on the little things.

Frost can be quite destructive and Spindle berries were dropping off the tree as I was trying to photograph them.

A few of the remaining flowers were totally frosted and I don’t think that they will last much longer.

It feels a bit like we are saying goodbye to the colours of Autumn and hello to the greyness that is Winter.

Today wasn’t very cold.The Puddles were not frozen…

(There is nothing like a cool drink of mud to set you up for the day)

There was no frost at all under the trees. They have a warmth of their own, trapping warm air and protecting their surroundings from exposure to the cold night.

I am not really sure that this is frost on the grass and not just cold dew.

But Winter is coming…. and the Sloes will taste sweeter.

Fizz got an extra walk and she has got insulation so she doesn’t mind the cold and when we got home I had some toast (In case it gets bad later)

 

 

Winter is coming

Heh heh 🙂 But it is not here yet.

I would love to have a cold winter. Hard frosts and clear blue skies, blizzards and deep snow. Fizz and I have never played snow balls or made snow angels or built a snow dog. That would all make for some memorable photographs.

I think that we are going to get mud. That’s what we had last year. Grey skies, rain and floods and mud on mud. It’s not so good.

It’s sunshine Fizz. You remember sunshine don’t you?

It’s warm and it makes you feel sleepy.

She can have a little cat-nap while I photograph some berries.

These are Sloe Berries, the fruit of the Blackthorn. They are traditionally used to flavour Sloe Gin but I like to eat them straight of the tree.

They do have a large pip but also a lot of flesh and they are very juicy. The have an astringent quality, they leave your mouth feeling dry and puckered, the only cure for this is to eat another one.

A lot of people find them too tart and they are just a nibble for me, I have never sat down and ate a bowlful. The flavour is supposed to sweeten after the first frosts but I can never wait and I have been eating them since the end of August.

This has been a very good year for Sloe berries.

Wakey wakey 🙂

Come on we have got sunshine to see.

It is nice out but recent rains have left the tracks a bit muddy. I suppose that it is time to get the old Wellies out of storage.

We shall look back and laugh at this soon.

Looking back at old photo’s I think that perhaps this year I should invest in waders or a full body wet suit. In this next picture she thinks that I am drowning and is trying to administer the kiss of life.

Come on it is not that wet yet. Well, not for me anyway 🙂

Our next berry is Black Bryony. This one is deadly poisonous of the painful blistering variety, you wouldn’t eat one. Now that leaves are falling from the trees this is becoming more evident as it scrambles about in the hedgerow.

You might want to clean yourself up a bit, I can’t really take you home like that.

Good Girl.

Blue

Blue is for Sloes. Blackthorn is the most wonderfully photogenic tree.

Blackthorn flowers appear before the leaves. Hawthorn, which looks very similar from a distance, gets it’s leaves first and then flowers. So when the hedgerow first turns white in March, that’s the Blackthorn and when it does it again in May that’s the Hawthorn.

But this isn’t Spring this is Autumn and today we have berries. There is no confusion at this time of year. The fruits of the Blackthorn are big and plentiful and very beautiful.

The Search for Robin’s Pincushion

This is Robin’s Pincushion.

I haven’t seen one of these for years (This is a very old photo)

Well I saw one last night on Clare’s blog “A Suffolk Lane” and I thought to myself, “I haven’t seen one of those in ages.” So Today Fizz and I went to look for one.

They grow on roses and we have lots of wild roses in the hedgerows around the farm, I packed sandwiches and water and off we went.

Fizz ate all of the sandwiches almost as soon as we were out of the door so that left me free to poke around in the hedgerow and take photographs. Here are some of the things that we found.

We found miles and miles of cable running through the hedge and thought, “Hello, it looks like the Badgers have bought themselves a computer”. So we followed it.

But all there was on the end of it was some flowers.

We found lots of blue berries on the Blackthorn that weren’t really blue.

The blue dust rubbed off and they didn’t look very ripe yet.

In fact being green was beginning to feel like a theme. The Rose Hips that we had seen were still a long way off.

So were the Hazelnuts.

Elderberries were only just starting to colour up.

And the Hawthorn still has a way to go.

The only thing that I could find to eat (Having lost my sandwiches to a card cheat earlier in the day) was the occasional Blackberry.

Finally we found the Rose we had been looking for.

There right in the middle of the bush and just behind the friendly thorns was the sweetest little Pincushion ever.

Robin’s Pincushion is a Gall made by the wasp Diplolepis rosae. The wasp lays about sixty eggs in an unopened leaf bud of Wild Roses (Dog or Field Rose). A chemical reaction then causes this weird and wonderful distorted growth that becomes home to the wasp larvae.

I am really pleased that we found one today. 🙂 I haven’t seen one of these in ages.

Animal Magic

“Just like that”

It’s your destiny

The Swallows have fledged, or at least they are fledging. They are still in the nest today but they have been out and they can fly.

It has taken me a few days watching and all that you get are a couple of short video’s but for me, my understanding and the pleasure that I got from watching them makes a few days just a drop in the ocean. It was time well spent.

Anyway you should be glad that you don’t have to watch the whole twenty hours of video, that I now have to sort and delete from my machine to free up space.

Here are the best bits.

Yesterday morning there were five birds on the nest, there were five birds on the nest and then there were four birds on the nest. I had missed the very first flight and only realised when number five returned to the nest.

This first video starts with the mother calling for them to leave the nest, there is a little comic interlude of the way that they follow flies, their little heads bobbing in unison and in the last bit the second bird to approach the nest is the returning chick. Does he bring food back or do the others just think that he has?

This next video shows them leaving the nest and returning. They spent most of the day fluttering around inside the little alley way that has become their home and by the end of the day they were all settled back on the nest but this is fledging. Today I think that they have ventured outside and seen the blue sky but they still return to the nest.

These birds have made me think a lot about nature as a whole thing and about life and death in the wild. The caterpillars that I am trying to raise are falling to the parasitoid flies that these Swallows depend on for food and survival. The parents have done a really good job of raising them given the wet weather we have been having. I have often looked out in the pouring rain and wondered how they are managing to raise a brood and now this, flight.

I am so in in love and in awe of them and so damned jealous.

I am jealous because they get to eat those delicious crunchy flies, or perhaps because they can raise offspring in a matter of weeks and not the 26 years it usually takes us. Maybe I am jealous of something else altogether…..