Thursday

The wild cherry trees on the verge

my white and green tulips ready to open

the cows going back to the barn

found stitchwort in the verges

Nelson's geese

The strange alien plant called the butterbur.  I meant to catch the butterfly on the butterbur but of course could not.

Glorious sun, lit up the world yesterday as we went for a walk. So quiet hardly any traffic on the road and the intimacy of a small village on show.  Nelson's geese who have been making a lot of noise recently snowy white against the green of the grass

The recycling van has just picked up my stuff and driven off with a friendly toot of horn.  The one thing I decided to recycle today was a box full of lager cans, Paul had bought it last year, and it has stayed in the cupboard all that time.  Then yesterday as I looked at my meagre load of  cardboard recyclable goods I decided that this too must go, so I left a little message on the box with funny faces.  Already the tears start at what I have done.

As I walked and looked at the emerging dandelions scattered around I could not see any bees but then walking under the clouds of white blossom the familiar humming of bees at work, they were up amongst the starry white flowers.  Soon there will be the small, hard and bitter red cherries which the birds adore, and the trees will be stripped in a matter of days.  

I chased a butterfly to catch it on the butterbur plant, there were several types out brimstone, orange tip and a couple of brown, the ones I always call 'pedestrian crossing butterflies'.  No luck my camera is always too late in responding but as the wild flowers emerge so do the butterflies.

Which brings me to what I was going to write about.  Which two books would you take to your 'Desert Island'?  Yes I am really chucking out the bible, I will spare you the swear words;) and taking Dorothy Hartley's Food in England and Geoffrey Grigson's The Englishman's Flora, for these are my bibles and to which I return always, for those small fascinating unimportant fact/facts that litter our literature.  My eight discs is a tad more difficult, (for American visitors this is a programme which interviews many different people over their music and book choice). And has been going since 1942.

Dorothy Hartley seems a fascinating person to research, born in Wales, she was a journalist and her book was published in the 1950s.  The blurb says that she went round the country interviewing the last of the country people who still had traces of Tudor times in their cooking habits, and the book itself is indeed a historical cornucopia of wonderful facts.

 

And the one thing I had forgotten to record for yesterday, was the enormous box of chocolates, courtesy of Amazon which sat on the doorstep, no name as to who had sent it.  Phoned my daughter, nope she said, and when I eventually got through to my son, it turned out to be him.  First time he has done that! bless him.