Cancelled

With regret, I’m announcing today that The Magic of the Moors retreat scheduled for this coming August is cancelled.

Watch this space for future retreats!

The Upside of Rain

Well all the recent rain had to be good for something!  Captured this at the weekend and thought you might like to share it. 

Joss and I were walking back down the side of the reservoir with no idea of what was unfolding behind us.  Turned the corner and casually glanced over my shoulder and….WOW!  I only had my iPhone with me so I made a grab for it before the rainbow faded.  It was still raining at this point and blowing an absolute gale.  I tried to steady the phone on the dam wall but to no avail.  The wind was blowing my hands every which way.

But I was still able to bring you a bit of the glory.  It really was the most spectacular rainbow I’ve seen in a long time.  A complete arc and positioned beautifully across the water.

Thank goodness (and my husband) for my (not so) humble iPhone!

Sheep Instead Of Water

Despite weeks and weeks of intermittent rain, the reservoirs around here are VERY low.  So low the sheep have taken up residence where the water ought to be (spot them lying on the sandy area in the middle of the picture).

The pool on the moor edge has dried up altogether (I worry about the frogs).  And the ponds on the moor across the valley are nothing but glorified puddles.

All of which lends credence to the fact that there are parts of the country officially suffering from drought.

The Tale of the Giant Hogweed

So a local friend rang me, excited about an exotic plant he’d spotted by the roadside.  ‘Like a cabbage on a stick’, he said.  Wanted me to identify it.

I went to see the plant and, sure enough, the about-to-unfurl leaves looked like lumpy cabbages.  On sticks.  But exactly how to go about identifying it had me slightly baffled.  There were no flowers as yet.  So what does one google?  Tall plant with big green leaves?  That should narrow it down to several thousand species…

Busy with other things, I put the identity search on hold.  But then came a second phone call.  This one extremely irate.  The language, a little…er…colourful.  The plant had gone!  Dug up.  Stolen!  The grass in front of it trampled, and a hole where the prize specimen had been.

Convinced some gardener had filched it for his/her garden, my friend castigated the entire green-fingered race for their selfishness.  In most disparaging terms.

But then a neighbour, who’d also noticed the alien foliage, shed light on the drama.  The plant was, he said, a Giant Hogweed.  Which is not, it turns out, a very friendly plant at all.  In fact, touch it and you might well end up in hospital.  The sap reacts with sunlight to produce blisters on the skin….which leave horrible marks that last for years.  In fact, so unwelcome is Giant Hogweed that it’s actually illegal to introduce it into the wild.

It seems likely, then, that the now menacing intruder was dug up by some concerned citizen who didn’t want anyone hurt…or didn’t want the plant to reproduce (it spreads like proverbial wildfire).

Then again, it may now have pride of place in some dastardly gardener’s garden after all….

The Nature Table: June

It’s summer!  And, despite the deeply depressing weather, there’s abundance all about.  The fields are vibrant with buttercups; the lanes are scented with elderflowers; the paths meander through waving grasses; and as for the moors…

It’s strange.  I never associate the moors with wild flowers; yet yesterday I couldn’t walk but tread on them.  Masses of them!  Ox-eye daisies and red clover; bird’s foot trefoil and dandelions; cow parsley and foxgloves.  As well as several others I couldn’t name.

The frequent showers of the last few weeks have brought out the slugs and snails, so they’ve crept onto my virtual table, too.  Which makes it pretty crowded.  But then it is June.