Thursday...with a throwback

I wasn’t feeling very inspired today...

I’ve been waking up at about 4:30 am and then getting up at about 5am for the last few days which then leads to feeling completely knackered a few days down the line...

so I went for a bike ride, knackered as I was...

September is coming up with some great weather at the moment so I’m really enjoying cycling, ( plus there’s a fantastic new cycle path, recently finished, near home ).

I picked a bunch of wild flowers...

I got some slightly irked looks from a few older people who were having a walk, which made me ask myself if I was doing something awful, but I can’t see that picking a few ( and I’m always really careful never to go madly picking ) common wild flowers will affect the wild flower population on the cycle path...in my experience, picking flowers only encourages more flowers to bloom, unless you completely ransack the highways and byways with a strimmer...

Anyway, I put the flowers on the table and then into various vases and jam jars, had a cup of tea, and just looked at them...

and weirdly it was the purple daisies from my own garden which inspired the composition.

I’d seen some white ones on the bike ride, which I didn’t pick, but which I’d thought looked really pretty...

After I’d put the composition together, I felt it needed the small magnifying glass in it, which I’ve sometimes used before, but I couldn’t find it anywhere ( and still can’t...)

But in my looking I came across some of my old stuff from the 80’s...

My friends and I used to collect sequins, and my best friend had the best collection of all; the collection we were in awe of; the most coveted collection, the collection I wanted... 

Years after the sequin collecting fad had finished, my friend gave me her famed collection ( still in the box! ).

I’d added to the box with buttons and beads, as well as other bits and pieces, when I was in my late teens. 

I used to embroider espadrilles and sell them in local shops, and I'd used the sequin collection, so although it diminished, it was utilised!

I save lots of small things and they’re often like little childhood markers or memory triggers and I quite like being taken back to the 1980’s in the opening of a drawer...

My brother’s ZX Spectrum; and Hungry Horace...

Owen Owen in Coventry...an uneventful part of my normal, everyday life then...

...my old school badge ( yes,  I went to a school called ’Squirrels’! )

...So, from feeling pretty much nothing at all this morning, I somehow meandered into a genuine throwback Thursday!

Saturday...

I have to admit that I haven't properly been in the garden for over a week, which is part of the reason I'm sharing another of my grandparent's postcards...

I've been spending a lot of time on trains over the last fortnight, but I have also 

been trying to get in a bike ride most days. This morning's bike ride ( ahead of the train journey I'm currently on ) was so beautiful; there were so many Hawthorn berries about, and the lichen was looking very fresh...

...the cycle path is full of wild flowers which I sort of thought must have finished by now because of the amount of Autumn berries about...

but, onto the postcard...

I can't quite decipher all of it but here is what I can make of it:

6pm Wednesday 11th September 1935 ( posted at 6:30 from Tenby to my Grandfather staying in Guernsey )

Hello Buddy Dear,

Have just returned from o.f ! Such a glorious ride.

Won't Cov seem flat when we get back? Haven't heard any more about getting back, Stones think 8am. Please come home safely love won't you?

Did you hear about Alan Cobham display at Blackpool? 1 pilot killed, also 2 passengers.

Rough sea and high tide tonight. Hope it won't be out for your crossing.

Best of love once more, love.

Ever with love, your Baby xxx

Hope you all have a great weekend...

Wednesday...

Back in June I posted a piece about the amazing wild flower meadow near my local supermarket...

I’ve passed it a few times recently and from a distance it just looks like a piece of scorched scrubland, but I decided to have a closer look today...and put a few seed pods in my pocket too!

I came away feeling that it was as beautiful as it was in June but just in a completely different way...

  ...it’s so fantastic that it hasn’t been mowed down, and that it’s obviously being encouraged to self-seed for next year.

Thursday...flower naming

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:

Himalayan Balsam...

Wild Teasel...

Hawkweed Ox Tongue...

Upright Vetch...

Swine’s Succory...

( this was really tricky to find on the web, although it seems to be a relation of Lapsana... )

Common Ragwort...

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...

Hardhead... 

Wild Rape Seed...

( ...and the photographer’s companion! )

Tuesday...blackberry pickings

We were looking for milk thistles today ( there’ll be more about that in a couple of weeks... ) and found ourselves down a tiny Sussex lane; so tiny that when the windows were down we were able to lean out of the car and snip the thistles. Getting them in was trickier as they are extremely difficult to handle...

However my son proudly snipped a bramble...which wasn’t quite ripe

but which then reminded me that some of the blackberries in the garden needed picking...

...these are also ridiculously spiky and  tricky to pick, so I suggested we sacrificed some of the unripened ones for the sake of preserving our hands

...so although we’re deep into August and Summer, there will be the first blackberry and apple crumble tonight of hopefully many more over the September and dare I say Autumnal months!