Today began with sunshine but went rapidly downhill by midmorning, leaving us with a thick covering of cloud. Not cold not raining but extremely dull. Still, there has been enough dry weather to make most of the mud puddles disappear. Even the huge puddle which has been causing me to do a detour on one of my running routes, so deep it really needed wellington boots, has dried up. No doubt it will only need one rainy day to reestablish itself.
At least we managed an early evening walk with sunshine yesterday, heading up the hill on one side of the valley to catch some rays before the sun went over the hill on the other side. An Italian friend of mine has been expressing her frustration at the weather in this country, where the sun decides to shine just in time for sunset.
On our wanderings we look out for unusual flowers and plants, unusual to us anyway. Some of these end up pressed - I have a collection of small notebooks with flowers and leaves collected on various trips. I even have an old-fashioned flower press, purchased for me from an antique/junk shop by my daughter-in-law. Lately the wild flowers go into small pots and jars and sit on the kitchen window ledge, contrasting nicely with rather monochrome green of the avocado and aloe vera plants that live there. And some are sketched into what began as a lockdown journal, which had a couple of days of writing and then morphed into a lockdown sketchbook.
Yesterday we collected a yellow, daisy-like flower that grows everywhere at the moment. A diligent search of the trust flower book identified it as common ragwort, a name that suggests that there might be another sort that is more high class. Apparently it is poisonous to livestock. Who knew? Probably my eldest granddaughter who has an app on her phone that identifies and gives information about plants. She claims to need this so that she can identify which plants her tortoise and the other inhabitants of her menagerie can eat! She may be a bit eccentric and obsessive but she seems to be mostly harmless.
Common ragwort apparently attracts moths and butterflies. This does not make people rush to plant it in their gardens, as seems to be the case with buddleia. The trusty flower book informs me that “In fact, it is the foodplant of the black-and-red cinnabar moth: sometimes its black-and yellow-barred caterpillars cover the plant, totally stripping the leaves.” And yes, the specimen we picked came complete with stripey caterpillar!
On the same page in the flower book I found common fleabane, again hinting at the existence of a more refined cousin somewhere. The name, fleabane, intrigued me, of course, as I have a possible eccentric love of words, this one suggesting a possible usefulness in getting rid of fleas. Its posh (ie Latin) name is pulicaria dysenterica, a name equally suggestive of possible usefulness. The trusty flower book came to the rescue again:
“Fleabane's common name comes from its former use as an incense to drive away insects. Other past uses include treatments for dysentery and unspecified ocular maladies.”
There you go!
In the more serious, grown-up world of the pandemic, it appears that england’s chief nurse was dropped from daily coronavirus briefings for, or at any rate just after, refusing to back Dominic Cummings. She has been very loyal in fact, stating that it is quite usual for people to be dropped from briefings. “It is indeed true I was dropped from the briefing, but that happened to many of my colleagues as well,” she said. However, one rather gets the impression that it could be a case of “if you are not totally with me, you are against me and deserve to be dropped from whatever is going on.”
So much for following the science!
I read that we are all buying more groceries in the UK. Well, probably not me personally but it seems that nationally sales rose at the fastest pace since records began in the three months to 12 July, as Britons shifted to making meals at home during the temporary closures of restaurants, cafes and workplaces in the coronavirus lockdown. I can understand the increase in purchases for stuff to make lunch with but why more food is needed for evening meals I don’t quite understand. Back when I was a working girl, we usually had a home cooked meal in the evening most days. And I know that my son and family follow the same pattern, although I also,know that my daughter’s partner had a tendency to pick up takeaway meals before he started working from home.
Apparently corner shops and small co-op stores like the one in our village have benefitted from people’s reluctance to go far from home during the lockdown, seeing an increase in shoppers. I certainly go to the co-op more frequently than I used to and for a greater range of goods, despite their curious lack of such things as All Bran and Yakult!
Some time soon I maybe should venture to the local Tesco store once again.
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment