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I Think I Deserve Praise

Pea pods arranged in a flower shape with purple potatoes and tomatoes

You read that right, although it is not generally the done thing to say so.

I don’t deserve praise for growing this fine produce because I didn’t – they caught my eye at a flower show. Being a lover of peas in pods (provided they are sweet), as I could not eat them, immortalising their freshness in a picture made a good, if sorry, second. Purple potatoes, purple kale and purplish tomatoes added extra interest, but it’s not for spotting those either. Continue reading “I Think I Deserve Praise”

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Poisonous Red and White Spotted Toadstools: Fly Agaric

Red toadstool with white spots

Early autumn is a great time to hunt for fungi, so I have spent some time searching for the most atmospheric of all, red and white spotted toadstools, in all the likely and less likely places I could think of near where I live. As often happens, when I was not searching, I glanced up and had the thrill of seeing twenty or thirty of them growing on a hillside in a narrow strip of mixed, light woodland on the edge of peaty moorland.

Toadstools are the fruiting bodies of underground mycelial networks. Happy to return to earth, they emerge only briefly after a rain, swelling rapidly to full size then rotting back after releasing spores from white gills on the undersides of their caps.

Fly agaric growing in moss and leaf litter

Continue reading “Poisonous Red and White Spotted Toadstools: Fly Agaric”

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Attack on Nature: Do We Care?

Metal owl, back alley, Darwen, Lancs

Recent government announcements have united the UK’s leading nature charities in protest. Issues include:

  • Proposals that weaken our Habitat Regulations.
  • Creating large enterprise zones which will reduce the need for planning permission in areas that currently include, for example, Special Protection Areas for birds.
  • Rolling back the new Environmental Land Management Scheme (ELMS) that encourages farmers to protect nature in favour of the old, often criticised method of paying landowners a set amount per acre of land owned.
  • An ongoing drought is drying up rare chalk rivers and all of our rivers fail to meet the chemical standards set for them.
  • British Woodland is becoming less diverse.
  • The UK is one of the most nature depleted countries, in the bottom 10% globally and last among the G7 group.

The Royal Society For The Prevention of Cruelty to Birds (RSPB) has been leading the response. I’m not a bird photographer, so I’m using owl art for this post, owls being an old symbol of wisdom. And because art might be the only way future generations know some of the wildlife our society takes for granted.

Continue reading “Attack on Nature: Do We Care?”