A Snowy Darwen Moor

Following up my frosty rose pictures, I thought you might like to enjoy Darwen Moor in the snow vicariously without freezing your fingers or nose. Continue reading “A Snowy Darwen Moor”
Poisonous Red and White Spotted Toadstools: Fly Agaric
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.
Continue reading “Poisonous Red and White Spotted Toadstools: Fly Agaric”
Festival of Leaves: Red Acer

Dawn Miller is hosting a weekly Festival of Leaves challenge to celebrate autumn that will run for the next 10 – 12 weeks. I’d have felt more concerned my first offering might not count, being counterfeit autumn leaves, had Dawn’s first not been chrysanthemums.
Wilde Weelde, Floriade: a Partnership Between Humans and Nature
While your eye may naturally pick out the flowers, when I was face-to-face with this memorable landscape, I marvelled at that long, structured wall of tree trunks and re-purposed construction materials in the background. The fauna wall was by far the biggest insect hotel I’d ever seen.
Broad swathes of the Wilde Weelde garden’s boundary are made from small sections of logs of different diameters, stacked leaving gaps between them – the log version of a dry stone wall, you might say. The effect reminded me of the ramparts of a castle, except these walls have gaps that a raider could saunter through. Continue reading “Wilde Weelde, Floriade: a Partnership Between Humans and Nature”
Insect Hotel by Frysian Design in a Flower Garden
It was great to see so much focus on insects during our recent trip to Floriade. This insect hotel, placed among flowers, created one of my favourite picture-memories from the show. Continue reading “Insect Hotel by Frysian Design in a Flower Garden”
What Happened Next (a Bit of a Rant)
If you saw yesterday’s post, you might react to today’s snapdragons with some of the bewilderment I felt. Continue reading “What Happened Next (a Bit of a Rant)”