“I’ve come so far — I shan’t give up”

This snail is clearly signalling the letter P (for ‘prize’) in semaphore. I’m just sorry I couldn’t stay to transcribe the entire message. If I may hazard a guess, I imagine she was quoting John Bunyan.

And though she doth but very softly go,
However, 'tis not fast nor slow, but sure;
And certainly they that do travel so,
The prize they do aim at they do procure.

Extract from Upon a Snail, by John Bunyan

And in close-up:

A tree that would not give up, nor be held back from reaching its destiny.

There’s a lesson for us there, I think. If I’d posted this yesterday, you might have mistaken this for an April Fool’s joke, but it’s real, I promise.

I was taking a snap of some apple blossom and noticed a determined little ladybird almost invisible among the flower buds.

Did it fly there or climb, I wonder? It seems to blend in pretty well. I’m tempted to start a series on mini-beasts hiding in plain sight.

This Robin nonchalantly took flight from its perch on a tree in a sensory herb garden.

My companion busied themselves with the potting soil, while I snapped a colour and texture collection at golden hour.

The muted colours of winter giving way to the buds of spring provides lots of visual interest if you are prepared to look up-close. An early bumblebee resting on some Virburnum.

Here are some of the visual treats we collected in our meanderings.

When the spring weather is wet, slugs come out for track meets, lining up, and racing each other. With their engines running, pumping with excitement, they line up on the tarmac of the neighbourhood sidewalk in the broad daylight. VROoooM, and then they are OFF!! Leaving their singly footprinted tread-trails behind them.

In these recent rainy days, there is one flower which is well equipped to cope with the wet, wind, and the cold.

It is the Lenten Rose or Hellebore. The Germans call it the sneezewort. The photos above and below are taken from a snail’s eye view. That’s because the flower faces downwards by habit.

From a human being’s point of the view the flower looks and acts like an umbrella. The spring rain runs off the flower, keeping it nice and dry inside.

The barberry is still wearing its winter outfit in last year’s fashionable Cayenne and Viva Magenta.

Barberry bushes often have spoon-shaped leaves. This variety has little spikes on the leaf-edge, that remind us of slug horns, holly, or agaves.

The winter and spring cherry tree looks magnificent in its oriental splendour.

Trees are magnificently complex systems. The tree has an up and down elevator. The up elevator is the sap layer surrounding the heartwood. It is called xylem. It carries water from the soil via the roots to the leaves.

Together with carbon dioxide from the air and energy from the Sun, the tree makes glucose and oxygen in the leaves. The oxygen enters the air, and the glucose goes down the down elevator (the inner bark called the phloem).

The sugar-laden sap tastes good. Some humans eat it. They are called Canadians. There are a few Canadians in my family. They love pancakes for breakfast and they smother them with tree sap (that is maple syrup).

A bare-root whip is a young tree, about two years old. We planted just over 200 recently. They were alder buckthorns.

These trees are one of only two tree species that the brimstone butterfly caterpillar loves to eat, the other being the common buckthorn.

The pale yellow-green of brimstone butterflies is similarly beautiful to the sulphur quartz that they are named after. They look like the leaves of the plants that they inhabit like alder buckthorn and ivy.

The whips were planted in small plantations on the bends in a lovely small river. The intention is to prevent erosion of the river bank as it meanders.

They were planted together with hawthorn, blackthorn and spindle, which are all twiggy, woody trees that make a good hedge. They attract pollinating insects, bees, and birds like thrushes, redwing, fieldfare, and finches. The hawthorn attracts wood mice and slow-worms, the spindle attracts magpie moths, spindle ermine moths, scorched wings, and holly blue butterflies. The blackthorn is popular with hairstreak and swallowtail butterflies and many species of moth caterpillars.

Some crack willow has been planted in these plantations. These will grow tall. In windy conditions the branches crack noisily and fall.

The fallen branches can float downstream and get lodged in the bank and grow into new trees.

Several passers-by stopped to ask us what we were doing. I met Peter who shared his beautiful photos of the local river taken at sunrise and sunset.

I will explain what a dibber and tang are, in case you don’t know. A dibber is a special spade that foresters use to plant small leafless trees (called whips).

The dibber has a kind of foot-rest called a tang. The idea is that the tool cuts the soil, so that the whip can be be inserted, burying its roots.

While planting, we added a soaking of living nature called compost tea (a special concoction containing mycorrhizal fungi). I think of it like the tree’s power-breakfast of sourdough toast and marmalade.

The Royal Horticultural Society has this to say on the topic:

Mycorrhizas are beneficial fungi growing in association with plant roots, and exist by taking sugars from plants ‘in exchange’ for moisture and nutrients gathered from the soil by the fungal strands. The mycorrhizas greatly increase the absorptive area of a plant, acting as extensions to the root system.

To grow well, plants need a wide range of nutrients in various amounts, depending on the individual plant and its stage of growth. The three key plant nutrients usually derived from soil are nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, while carbon, oxygen and hydrogen are absorbed from the air. Other vital soil nutrients include magnesium, calcium and sulphur.

Phosphorus is often in very short supply in natural soils. When phosphorus is present in insoluble forms it would require a vast root system for a plant to meet its phosphorus requirements unaided. It is therefore thought that mycorrhizas are crucial in gathering this element in uncultivated soils.

So now you know :-) about tree plumbing!

The fungi are little traders — exchanging water and micronutrients for sugar. Sourdough for marmalade, kind of!

The system pays off because those fungi are hanging out between the soil and the root tips. Root tips hold starchy sugar stores, like a squirrel stores acorns.

So many fallen sweet chestnuts covered the paths in this wooded garden.

It was like walking on marshmallow — a soft cushion under the boots.

In the trees, birds were singing — robins, song thrushes, jackdaws, and blackcaps.

This garden has treecreepers, a mystical bird that walks up (never down) trees.

I wonder how old these trees are? Sweet Chestnut trees live long lives: 700 years or so.

There is a tree known as Castagno dei Cento Cavalli on Mount Etna that is estimated as aged between 2000 to 4000 years old. In Britain, some sweet chestnut trees are 400 to 500 years old, meaning they were around during the Tudor and Stuart periods.

How did they get to Britain? Theophrastus (371–287 BC), ‘the father of botany’, spoke of sweet chestnut covering the slopes of Mount Olympus. Some people say the Romans must have brought them here for their kitchen gardens.

Facts credit: https://www.forestryjournal.co.uk/features/18952371.disputed-origin-uncertain-future-sweet-chestnut/

I like the Carder bee for its orange faux-fur gilet and striped stockings; or perhaps it is sporting the warm collar lapels of a flying ace’s bomber jacket and a striped scarf. Snoopy would approve.

Is it a coincidence that its formal name is Bombus pascuorum — the “field bomber”? Bombus actually means “buzz” not bomb. So whether the buzz of an aeroplane’s engine or the buzz of a fashion catwalk jives more with you, remember to look out for these very hairy bumblebees.

Wardrobe questions aside, we can learn so much about the art of flight by watching nature go about its business.

There is an air show happening every day, if you care to look for it.

Late in the season, this Holly is sporting some snazzy stripes.

He does seem to remember that he is quite likely to get a scrap of food on a Tuesday.

If you try to pick this fellow up, then hold him well aft of those claws to avoid a nasty nip.

This snail in its striped shell was swaying in a slight breeze on a hot summer’s day.

Snails are amazing climbers. They can get anywhere. It’s absolutely usual to see them 10 feet up a giant buddleia bush. Here is another snail, with an intricately patterned shell, on a leaf in the rain.

The different hairdos of these field thistles vary from tight perm to crazy, wild, and windswept.

I have seen them for weeks, but in late August they seem to be especially abundant.

The iridescent purple-blue is revealed as it readies for flight. The browner one is a girl, while the wholly blue one is a boy.

The photo is blurry because the sunshine was so bright I couldn’t even see what I was photographing. Later that day, I took another look and was delighted that I had managed to capture its image to share with you.

Many moths prefer to venture out at night. This one comes out in the daytime.

What a magnificent flying wizard. Marvel at the intricacy of those fabulous wings.

They often sit with their wings unfolded, presumably to take in what heat there is in the shade. Other butterflies prefer fuller sunlight to gather their energy, so there is less competition for territory in the woods. It is always a delight to come across one of these beautiful creatures in the cool, dappled woodland light.

The female of the species. She is not dangerous to humans, thank goodness, although she looks fierce.

This is the same butterfly with its wings unfolded. It is called a Wall.

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