Ecology, Humour

Doricum spotted in Wales!

When faced with plants he did not know my father would confidently pronounce them Doricums. ‘Shouldn’t it be Dorica?’ we would ask.

‘No, Doricums. The word is derived from the Greek, or possible the Zoroastrian,’ he would concede. Doricums grew everywhere in Hertfordshire — my dad was not much of a gardener.

Last spring we dug some gravel from the stream bed to create a pool to encourage fish, we left the gravel in a heap at the waters edge. Normally a fox would have placed a walnut whip on its summit — they do this to announce their ownership of all heaps — sand, salt for the roads, compost, even large mole hills — but this mound of gravel has become subject to another interloper — the dastardly Doricum!

Have you seen this plant before?

We have scanned the internet and looked at all our books but to no avail — although it does look vaguely familiar — we guess that it is feral or seriously out of context.

Do you have information about its true identity?

It has been nibbled but not by sheep, this gives it a spiky appearance — we’ve looked up squirrelwort and rabbit-bit in the index of popular names — its not even under badger-nip.

Is this a new species — D. notlikelae?

Addendum: 30.11.2023 St Andrew’s day and Winston Churchill’s birthday. On reflection this may have been a rather tatty example of Redleg (Persicarias persicaria L.) a member of the dock family. There is more of it about now and it looks more typical — sorry Dad!

Humour, Wales, Welsh culture

The Strange Case of the Renegade Lemon.

It is that time of year when something in the quality of light, the mist or the day-length, or the heady scent of sun-warmed blackberries in the air, turns the mind to jam. I hardly ever eat jam but nevertheless the compulsion to forage for jam jars in charity shops is irresistible. One day last week I went home with a complete stranger who thought she might have some spare jars under her sink.

In an area like Mid-Wales where we all spend more time in natural light and so are primitively tuned by the seasons — I am not alone. I pick up the last bag of sugar from the super-market — ‘we’ve run out three times this month’. says the lady at the check-out, ‘I don’t know why!’

‘Bake-off!’ says a young man from another planet who is queuing with his minimum-price-per-unit-of-alcohol lager.

‘Jam!’ says the pretty girl with the toddler who is transferring lemons from his mother’s basket onto the conveyer belt.

‘What a useful little boy!’ says I, ‘Lemons! I need lemons!’ I rush off to grab two — two large unwaxed lemons, I remember it is two because I work out the economics of it ( two large ones for 80p versus five little economy ones in a net for £2.00 — bastards!)

When I get back to the checkout my husband has arrived and the lady has already put my other shopping through and is starting on the pretty girl’s– I thrust my two lemons at the lady who adds them to my tally and takes my money as my husband embraces the shopping (bags cost 5p in Wales and I am forgetful and mean) — we struggle out with arms full of disparate shaped packages and bottles all determined to escape even if perishing in the attempt.

By the time we get home they are more compliant — even the three lemons. Three lemons! We’ve only gone and stolen one of that poor girl’s lemons… And after she reminded me!

Now something very Welsh occurs.

I go to my neighbour down the lane and have a nice glass of Pinotage — that’s not it. She used to work with the young man buying lager in the previous paragraphs, I recognised him, the one who was chatting to the pretty girl with the toddler — well he would, wouldn’t he? My friend rings him — he doesn’t say ‘Ah yes, she’s a cousin to my brother’s wife,’ but he does know her sister and, unusually for Wales, he knows her surname which is not Jones — she doesn’t live here but told him that she is visiting her Dad. Bingo — we’ve got her.

‘But how did you find me’, she asks somewhat anxiously. Oh dear, has she come home to Wales to escape a stalker, an abusive husband or the Inland Revenue, has she stolen away this attractive child and come to ground in the middle of nowhere only to be given away by a renegade lemon.

No, she remembers where she is. She relaxes. She thanks me for the lemon.

Glenys, the Lemon — that is who she is now, in our local nomenclature, like Dai Bread, the baker, who won the lottery and became Dai Upper-crust!.

Nature Photography

Giacometti butterfly?

Art or life?

Photographed by a friend — thanks David ‘Ikey’ Jones

It is in fact a plume moth, alive and not in anyway damaged or poorly!

Ecology, Nature Photography

Backswimmer in the wake of a dragon

I never seem to understand the limitations of my eye-sight or reaction-time and today I’ve been trying to photograph dragon flies again. I have many pictures of their wake — the disturbed but empty air just above the water where, just recently, they were — but wait… What is this?

Something lurking just below the surface — not clear enough to see.

Can you see what it is yet? Sorry! It’s what I call a water-boatman but when I look that up I find the term is ambiguous — it covers a multitude of sins — this needs clarification –I rummage in the shed for a fishing net and plastic punnet — the one without holes and bingo!

Notonectidae glauca or Greater Water Boatman

It is a Back Swimmer (Notonectidae glauca) Known in Britain as the Greater Water Boatman. It swims upside down (according to our prejudices) just below the surface of freshwater ponds, attracted to prey by the agitation of the water — the waves on the surface. It has a nasty toxic bite and probably ate all our tadpoles. It’s a proper bug and can haul itself through the surface and fly away though it didn’t when I hoicked it out to photograph it. I think its eggs develop directly into adults.

What about the Lesser Water Boatman? I hear you ask. He is called Corixa punctata — he swims the right way up near the bottom of the pond, is less agressive (a bit of a veggie) but is otherwise quite similar unless you have a macro lens — I shall look for him tomorrow.

Hill Farming, Welsh culture

Unhealthy, Unsafe and Uninhibited.

It’s August — the silage is made, the lambs are weaned — the hill farmer’s fancy can fly!

Amser siow — Showtime!

He and she will disport themselves with their neighbours ( please note the youngsters in the background sloping off into the bushes).

Or he may just watch the people and think vaguely of finding a mate.

Watching the totty in the dog show

Young bucks can pit themselves, one on one, in the shearing ring.

Or in teams —

Winning team?

Challenging their elders —

Red Lions

–and winning!

While in the produce tent there is combat of a more serious nature — the carrot wars.

Carrot combat.

The children meanwhile are introduced to a tarantula by an entertainer with a mission — he hands a scorpion out absent mindedly to a little boy, ‘ Here, hold this!’ the boy looks uncomfortable and hands it to the even smaller girl next to him who squeals and drops it. It scuttles towards the flaps of the tent where the parents are huddled nervously, they all jump backwards. The man with the mission scoops it up and plonks it on another child’s eager out-stretched hand.

Later he opens box after box and, in the same casual way, hands out the snakes — puts the curled up corn snake down on the head of a convenient child and festoons his bag of snub-nosed snakes on the shoulders of another group who stand very still — but not for long. Soon there is a milling of excited kids all with reptiles about their person — pythons and a skink, which makes them squeal louder because it poohs. There is a beautiful green chameleon and for those who are scared of rats there is a giant Gambian pouched rat.

Gradually the grown-ups start to creep in to the back of the tent and he says, ‘Do you mind?’ to a wary looking man, ‘this is rather heavy,’ and without waiting for a reply, drapes him with a huge king python.

New bonds are made.

Now the nervous parents are stroking the rat and the reptiles which nestle happily in the arms and hoods and up the jumpers of their relaxed children — mission accomplished!

Out in the sunshine the donkey racing has started — a lady who does not ride horses and who has just drunk a significant quantity of fruit cider is loaded into a metal chariot which is attached to a mule. The race is on — she valiantly lashes the mule with the reins, the chariot corners precariously, it does not tip and she comes second in her heat — everyone cheers.

Time for the final —

and genes will out. The final of the Donkey Derby is fought out between a mother and her daughter who unmistakably demonstrate the same joyful vitality — though Mum has just a bit more grit.

Ecology, Wales

Images of Summer

Bloodsucker on Ragwort

The sight of this flower beetle takes me back to the sunny meadows of childhood where holding one of these bloodsuckers was a right of passage! Misnamed, they hunt the flower heads for tiny insects although this one seemed to be drinking nectar.

Bloodsucker on Meadow grass

Bloodsucker on Ragwort

Bloodsucker on meadow grass

Fairies gambol and flit by the pond — dragonflies whizzing past my lens at the speed of sound — boom! I know — shutter speed too slow!

Dragonfly

Dragonfly I took last year

Cheating — a blue chaser from August last year!

Just above the water of the pond, perched on a rush, is a tiny skipper — it seems to be laying eggs.

Orange Skipper — not clearest image

Here she is again

Skipper with her tongue out

Skipper laying Egg?

Impressionist image of Orange Skipper

In the back-ground on this idyllic day is the sound of this little chap, well thousands of him, and not heard often in wet Wales!

Can you see the Meadow Grasshopper?

Sorry — not always the crispest of images but I am working on it!

Humour, Metaphysical

Eternal Analogy

Don’t panic but I’m talking about the relationship between Man and God. I should say between God and Man because God is more important but then, when it comes to the ‘relationship’, Man is probably the main mover — wielding his free will and his recently evolved imagination.

The analogy: you guessed — the shepherd and his flock (why does this woman never stop talking about sheep?) It’s not blasphemy — me and my sheep — the precedent is well established by great authority, it stands to reason and is immediately evident to anyone who keeps a woolly congregation.

Position is relative: I am the Walrus, the Ombudsman, the Gatekeeper, the Father. I don’t control the weather but they think I do. They plead, they nag, they accuse me, and when it rains for a week, they stand in full view, in rows, entranced, fixing me with all their psychic energy, praying (I swear they do) – it’s not easy being the supreme power.

Sheep’s view of Supreme Being.

We, — the trilogy — Him, the Maa and the Holy Dog — put up fences, make barriers, structure the known world. But we don’t make the lambs stick their heads into the fence and get stuck. We spray for fly and we immunize but we don’t hold dominion over all living things although they think we do.

You believe in God if you want to but be reasonable, believe he makes the boundaries, puts up the fences but doesn’t stop you crossing them — sticking your head in where it doesn’t belong and getting into difficulties – getting stuck. He can’t control everything – you may not like it but he’s muddling along doing his best. We all muddle along together — that’s Life.

Thanks to Peter Jenkins for image of the iconic arse (all rights reserved).

Ecology, Wales

Grass Roots Bio-Diversity.

Here’s a political picture: four man-made layers — you just know it’s wrong.

From the top -- over-grazed, windfarm on peat-bog, desolate, monoculture pine forest and modern farming

From the top — over-grazed mountain; wind-farm on peat-bog; desolate, monoculture pine forest; mechanised farming

In contrast, the farmland we tend here in Wales is designated by the Government as 100% habitat (which is probably true of most places if you know what you are looking at) — but it’s official, half our land is ‘oak and wild hyacinth’ — bluebell woods to you — ancient woodland that was felled after the war for pit-props for the economic recovery and grazed until 2006 when the Forestry Commission, with unusual wisdom, offered us a modest grant to replant and, more importantly, to exclude grazing for 15 years.

So for the last 8 years this land, nestling under the old hill fort has been spared the ravages of the hardy native sheep that we love but whose mission is deforestation. I never understand why folk get so enthusiastic about protecting the bleak moorlands of this area that are scoured bare by unnatural numbers of hungry sheep when, if left to its own devices this land would be broad-leafed woodland bursting with wild flowers, song birds and little furry creatures!

Couldn’t resist a little furry creature!

So here we are — our saplings, oak, hazel,rowan, aspen, alder, wild cherry and holly wrestle with self-sown birch and willow and the creeping shoots of blackthorn and hawthorn which insinuate themselves from the old hedgerows. They were planted naturalistically (not in rows), not to confuse the tree counters from the ministry, that was inadvertent (a happy accident) but to give them a head start and to make the wild-life feel at home. In the wet gulleys the alders are already 5 meters high in places. I don’t like to embarrass them but they are sexually mature with lots of little cones, the rowan have berries and this year for the first time there are wild cherries! Some of the oaks are taller than me (I sound like a parent) and in the spring and early summer the foliage on the new growth is bright red.

Red leaves on the new growth

Our new old wood is very young and we will need to maintain the glades and open areas — it would be nice to re-introduce a charcoal burner or an oak tanner, sadly extinct, to maintain the woodland clearings where the meadow-sweet can grow as it does now in the floor of our little dingle.

Imagine the vanilla perfume, the hum of bees and the tintinnabulatiion of the stream

Imagine the vanilla perfume, the hum of bees and the tintinnabulatiion of the hidden stream

Fruiting moss — once harvested for florists – you sink into it like green snow.

The land looks wild but cut back the undergrowth a little and you will find signs of quite sophisticated engineering from long ago, built by hand with shovel and river-stone.

Drainage culvert

And beware invaders when you clear ground; where we dug out a hidden culvert in the spring to unblock it and release the pond that had squatted along our track, we now have a bank of rose bay willow herb.

Rose Bay Willow Herb flourishes on any bare ground.

What amazes us is the variety of plants and animals that show themselves as the year progresses; every week the micro-landscape changes as the colours and shapes reflect the constantly changing balance within the ecosystem. As taller plants like the ferns, the miriad tall grasses, the foxgloves, meadowsweet and the parsleys grow up and take the light, the undergrowth of smaller plants, the mosses, shamrocks, wood anemones and bluebells, having flowered while they can are obscurred and you have to wade, shoulder deep in a tangled profusion of humming, scented, sometime prickling, jungle. The lushness and fertility of it all just knocks your socks off!

Tormentil — good for toothache

Orange skipper.

Angelica

Ringlet butterfly

Stream side hab.itat

Ringlet butterfly on nettle

Bursting sheaths of wild angelica.

The other half of our land is ‘severely disadvantaged’ and ‘unimproved’ pasture (what a cheek!) that we work hard to maintain without recourse to chemicals or artificial fertilizers — we hack down the bracken and dig out the gorse and cut the thistles just before they seed and we harrow the mole hills and we mend the fences and the sheep do the rest!

Sheep in the meadow -- once the orchisa have seeded.

Sheep in the meadow — once the orchids have seeded.

Humour, lifestyle

Double, double toil and trouble.

Auspicious day? Yesterday I cleaned the house which must have unsettled everyone. Today I could feel it through my feet – bare feet, next to godly feet – feel the silky smoothness of the wooden floors, the springiness of the fluffed up carpet pile and…

Bless the cats – a field mouse, just what I wanted for my birthday, but not as much as I wanted my breakfast. A bowl of muesli, topped with fruit-salad and — go on, spoil yourself – some double cream. I’ll eat it in the sunshine. So I popped it on the table outside the kitchen door but remembered the mouse (other members of the household are more squeamish than I), I picked it up by its tail, went out of the door and hurled the little body towards the overgrown bank (for the thrice mewing buzzard to eat)– not a very good delivery (sad in a cricketing family) – Splash. Luxury dead-mouse muesli!
You see I’d been reading Macbeth — so it was ordained and it set me thinking what else I should add to my birthday breakfast.
We live in Wales – so Dragon scales and it’s a classic recipe so
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog (all freely available),
I can get hemlock and yew,
but liver of blaspheming Jew?
‘That’s racist!’ interjects the spouse,
‘Just make do with mouse’.
Entrails of a cursing Celt
Would probably suffice –I felt

For offensive antiquary

Insert anathema contemporary

Nose of Turk will no longer work
A politician’s naval I’ll convert.
For Tartar’s lip — a grated betting slip,
Ear hair from a defrocked priest
would be in the spirit of the piece.
Gall of goat and sweat of stoat —
Microwaved in belly of python
And foamed up in a soda syphon…
…That should do it!

Ecology

Time traveller’s guide to Mid-Wales

The sun is shining, a domestic cat is yowling to announce its slaughter of a grey squirrel which it is dragging through the tall undergrowth of grasses, foxgloves but, this year, no policemen’s helmets (that is carnival policemen — pink helmets of Himalayan balsam): its June 2014 — elementary.

Farm cat — hunting

This time it’s a rabbit

All these factors give away the time — grey squirrels in Wales puts us somewhere in the last 120 years, foxgloves bloom in June when it usually rains, but not this year! Balsam only arrived recently — another invader, I prefer the notion of a pioneer species — but it doesn’t like floods in autumn and spring and, by God, we did have those. That’s narrowed it down, June 2014 and the bins are out in the lane — it’s a Tuesday — it’s today! I knew that all along!

Foxgloves

What I want to say is that, here, June is pink and purple with foxgloves and thistles and clover and orchids. May was blue and white (bluebells and wood anemones, dancing in the breeze) heady with the perfume of the May flowers and April was yellow. In July the valley floor will be cream and scented with meadow-sweet. June is pink.

Orchid meadow

Fritillary butterflies flit between the thistles, the air bumbles with bees and hums with wing-beats — I never was aware of the sound of bird’s wing until we came here. The pied wagtails have fledged and are sitting on the truck to avoid the cats — there are some feathers on the ground. The sparrows in the eves and the house-martins under the gable are still chattering in their nests. They say ‘any time now’. There is plenty to eat — a good year for midges and the damsel flies fluoresce in flashes around the pond.

Pied Wagtail fledgelings

Flitillary butterfly

Large orchid in grazing excluded area –spotted leaves

Red Damsel Fly

Orchid

Flitillaries canoodling on a thistle

More Orchids

Common Blue Damselfly (probably).

In bed at night with the windows flung wide, there is squeaking in the yard as the bats whizz around on silent wings — Good night.

	dianaashworth on Ready, Steady…
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	dianaashworth on Another Unusual Visitor!
	dianaashworth on Another Unusual Visitor!
	Brenda Hargreaves on Another Unusual Visitor!

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Thanks to Peter Jenkins for image of the iconic arse (all rights reserved).

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