May

A May bank holiday trip to Arlesford today and this amazing view of bluebells and stitchwort..





Heavily laden boughs of may were incredibly fragrant in the sunshine and the grass was colourful with buttercups and drifts of sheep sorrel.





I had a wonderful wander in the ruined old church and its graveyard beyond, where the grass and wildflowers are left to grow, hoping for butterflies.





I was treated to these beautiful white star-like flowers peeping out amongst the grass, which I've been trying to identify... Star of Bethlehem?





We did get to see some butterflies later on, walking in the grass (and nettles!) down near the little streams. We think this peacock must have hibernated over winter, as they're not supposed to be about yet - in the second photo you can see how tattered it is.





This was a beautiful butterfly I've not seen before, a Speckled Wood, which we found in dappled semi-woodland very near to a large stretch of water.



And as a fitting end to a fantastic afternoon, we were lucky enough to see both a blue-tailed damselfly and several large red damselflies, one of which obligingly sat on a leaf in the sunshine for us.

Holly Blue

This year we're going to try to photograph / identify and record the butterflies we see locally.. which will probably generally mean those that visit our garden while I'm pegging the washing out or fetching it in!



I hadn't been overly optimistic about any butterflies sitting still long enough for me to get a halfway decent photograph, but while I was out gardening recently this Holly Blue came and sat very obliging in a puddle for around 10 minutes.. so here is our first record of the season.



I was really thrilled to get close enough for long enough to see the banded antennae and legs and the body was a really fluffy powder-blue .. beautiful!

It kept fluttering around and then coming back for another long sit on the wet paving where I'd been watering in some plants. I wondered whether it was attracted by the wet or by the bit of blue plastic nearby which was exactly the same colour ... see second photo?

Fungi at Fingeringhoe

Went exploring at Fingeringhoe Wick nature reserve last weekend, run by the Essex Wildlife Trust. Amazing views across the flats ..

Further inland we explored a wonderful wooded walk area, full of fallen leaves and secret paths and .. fungi! I didn't get to go on a guided fungi walk this autumn as I'd hoped, so I just snapped anything I could find to look up in books later.

Identifying Trees

I spent a fantastic morning in early September with members of the British Naturalists Association (Central and North Essex Branch)in the woods at Little Baddow, learning to identify trees.

This is something I'd wanted to be better at for some long while, but its not always so easy to be ferreting about in a book looking things up while you're out and about, especially with active little boys around .. better to be playing and having fun! So to have the opportunity of someone more experienced taking the time to actually show me how to recognise a range of the more common trees was a great treat.

I'm sure I won't remember a lot of what I saw, but even if a few trees stick each time then I will be getting there .. and I'll definitely go again next year, as it was such a wonderful way to spend a couple of hours with lovely people in beautiful peaceful surroundings. The things I was most pleased to have seen were the Wild Service Tree, which is apparently quite rare, and the seed pods of Hornbeam which are beautiful .. I would have had no idea what they were beforehand. I can now also distinguish between a Sycamore and a Field Maple! It was also interesting to see healthy young elm trees growing .. I had not realised that they are not affected by Dutch Elm disease until they reach the height of about 10 feet.

I find writing things out helps me to remember (partly why I blog!) but also I am finding that its important when I have been shown things to go straight out again within a few days to look for the trees or plants again, while the new knowledge is fresh. And, later that week, I was lucky enough to stumble across a beautiful area of trees at Wivenhoe Park on the University of Essex campus. This gave me the chance to test my knowledge and take some pictures to reinforce what I had learnt.

Learning about different types of Oak trees.. on the Pendunculate Oak, acorns have stems but leaves don't, as seen here. With Sessile Oaks it is the other way around (am on the hunt but haven't found one yet).

And here is Alder, my favourite tree from the whole experience. Completely new to me, I remembered we were told it liked/could happily tolerate the wet, and here at Wivenhoe were alder trees growing right at the edge of a lake. Its got a nice distinctively-shaped leaf for the novice spotter and, best of all, its cones stay on the tree right the year round giving you another means to identify it.

As we went round I collected a leaf from each tree and wrote its name in biro on the back as a reference (sacrilege, I know, but for the greater good!). Then when I got home I was able to press and keep the leaves in an album. I had scribbled little notes of what were told onto the back of the handout, and I copied these out alongside.

Wild Autumn

Hope everyone is loving autumn .. I'm enjoying watching the colour changes and feeling the way the air is different now, too.

The garden is now completely wild, seedheads and overgrown creepers, vines and roses all competing in the wind and wet weather overnight but then still smiling brightly in the daytime sunshine.

Still picking yellow Ildi tomatoes from the hanging baskets and using handfuls of some unexpectedly lush sorrel from the veg patch. Blackbirds darting in and out of the all the overgrowth, feasting. The spiders who have been spinning their glorious webs amongst it all now looking fat and rather fine.

Me and the little'un had a jolly jaunt round our local nature reserve, the Lozenge, today to see what was happening there .. golden leaves, abundant berries, teasel heads ...

plumptious rosehips

colourful guelder rose















.. and also a magical sprouting of fungi!

Anglo-Saxon Herbs

Yesterday, a treat .. an overdue trip to West Stow Anglo-Saxon village while it was inhabited by seventh century Anglo-Saxon re-enactors, the Centingas. I haven't been for ages and was so excited to be visiting, especially to be taking my young son with me for the first time.

The first thing we saw on our visit was a new 'farm' area, designed to showcase some of the plants grown for food by the early Anglo-Saxon settlers at the village. I was so pleased to see the Wild Carrot I had been learning about growing here!

And then, bliss and joy, a great big medicinal herb bed .. brilliantly jumbled and tumbled but full of familiar friends, including the Mugwort I had just been learning about, too! What was great was that it was growing right alongside large amounts of Wormwood so I could clearly compare them and see the difference - wormwood's foliage is silvery all over, while mugwort's leaves have dark green tops but are silvery underneath.

Tansy

Wormwood and Saint John's Wort

Yarrow