On Tuesday, during our hedgerow car meanderings, I also collected a selection of wild flowers...
When I was about 10 years old there was a summer holiday project to collect, label and stick into a book a selection of wild flowers.
I looked forward to getting on with the project all Summer and then, rather typically, I suddenly realised that I only had about 4 days to get it done before going back to school!
I went round to a friend’s house and we collected flowers together...( she told me there were loads down a little path called ‘The Tinker Tank’...I don’t know why I’ve always remembered that ).
I loved it, and then felt rather foolish that I hadn’t worked on the project over the whole Summer, as I could have collected LOADS...and maybe even ones that no-one else had collected (...that’s always important to a 10 year old girl).
...but some of those flowers which I collected and named really stuck in my memory...wild campion, vetch, scarlet pimpernel...
I think I’ve always wanted to catch up on, or rather extend that school project, and now with various books of late grandparents and an iphone handy, I seem to be getting on with it...and I find photos of the plants a much more satisfying record, than pressed flowers ever were to me...
So here are some of my Summer wild flowers so far:
( this was really tricky to find on the web, although it seems to be a relation of Lapsana... )
I’m always cautious of this plant, as one year our whole family had to pull up an entire field of the stuff ( from the roots ) as it’s poisonous to horses and cattle...
( ...and the photographer’s companion! )
Wow, It's amazing. Yesterday I took a photo of this pink-red balsamina, here in polish mountains, where we are on holidays. And I talked to my husband, who is not a biologist, as I am, about intrusive species...
ReplyDeleteI really love your stories...
Magda
How amazing!! I’ve never picked them before and didn’t know what they were until the day before yesterday!
Delete:D
Coming back to your blog after coming back from holidays. What a wonderful cat, your friend. Its, funny to take pictures with cat head in focus, trying not to have it... We have 7 cats, so it's always the same: you can have good macro without cat, but in wide plane you alwas have black cat's ears...
DeleteI'm still avidly reading your posts, I so enjoy them! My daughter was talking about pressing flowers today in her flower squasher as she called it, I will definitely encourage it. The last photo is brilliant.
ReplyDeleteHi Emma! So glad you’re still enjoying them...and that it’s sort of inspiring the flower squasher in your daughter!
DeleteCheeks was getting really left out yesterday, so thought I better include him!
BTW I have just sorted out a date for the workshop...Sat Nov 8th at Knoyle Hall ( it is such a brilliant, old fashioned place to have it..it’s got old tables and everything! ). I’ll be sorting out an on-line flyer but just giving you the heads up as I know you were interested in coming. x