Celebrating gardens, photography and a creative life
While I enjoy seeing foxgloves in gardens, I can’t help comparing the straight, sturdy, varieties of commerce to wild foxgloves that weave around Lancashire’s fields and country lanes.
Rarely without some form of wave or bend – the ‘nod’ of folklore – wild foxgloves can grow with aplomb wherever they find themselves, high or low. Much of their charm is in their willy-nillyness. Continue reading “The Wildness of Foxgloves (Digitalis Purpurea)”
Becky has announced November will be a squares challenge month with the topic of walking, to encourage us all to get out in the fresh air. It’s wonderful to see her back.
I’m joining in with two pictures taken along a path that leads up to Darwen moor. Continue reading “Walking Squares: Stray Autumn Colour”
I almost missed out on the week of flowers, hosted by Cathy of Words and Herbs, but am scraping in with this froth of wildflowers for day 7.  The pink, raindrop-covered flower is corncockle, which is now vanishingly rare in the wild in Britain but still appears in annual wildflower mixes. Continue reading “Corncockle in a Wildflower Border”
This sequence of pictures was taken during an evening walk as temperatures started to cool off after a scorcher of a day. While not technically correct – they’re dark and indistinct – their atmosphere is sweet, for me at least. Continue reading “Amid the Wildflowers and Grasses At Dusk”
The third in my series of easily confused plants features some of the UK’s favourite spring wild flowers with a long heritage of lore.
While our native species of primula are well-loved, they are not as familiar and useful as they once were. Farmers are too busy to rub primroses on their cows’ udders on May Day to encourage milk. Most people who grow primroses near their doorway have forgotten the idea that they encourage faeries to bless the household. People no longer make tisty tosties from cowslip flower heads tied into balls, stems inwards, and hang them from sticks in their dozens to tell fortunes or wave in celebration. Few people have recently tasted cowslip wine. Cowslips are not common enough, and like all UK wild flowers, they are now protected.
But these wild flowers have such a dainty, delicate look, no matter how vigorously they grow, that they are rarely dismissed as weeds. Continue reading “Variations on a Theme: Primrose, Cowslip or Oxlip?”
Susan Rushton 