Bees and cystus.In the compost heap, I find a composted tennis ball, its woolly wrapping reduced to a rag, its central rubber sphere intact - smooth, black rubber. Another tennis ball emerges, this time in reasonably good condition. With some of the compost brushed off it's good enough for serving.
What are weeds, someone said, but plants growing where you don't want them. Today, I find a lettuce in a row of beetroot, and one of those oriental mustard, among the broad beans. The mustard, a broad leaved plant, with a purple tinge to its leaves, has an appetizing, spicy taste. Both the lettuce and mustard are wanted and will remain with their new neighbours until required for the table.
Meanwhile the section of the Grove, where the grass, now naturally seeded with wild flowers has been allowed to grow, is beginning to look free and shaggy as intended. Among the tall grass, sport buttercups. The most ordinary of flowers, they are often thought of as weeds when they appear on lawns and in vegetable beds, but here, they are allowed to show off and reach up from the end of their stalks to be looked at. The French call them boutons d'or, gold buttons.
6 comments:
Well, in my garden the buttercup is the bane of my existence! It is dreadfully invasive in the lawns and spreads into borders by the roots as well as seeds. The only way to get rid of it is to pull it out by hand and there's far too much to ever get it all out, sigh. I read somewhere that in pastures it's somewhat poisonous to cattle and/or horses.
Remarkable close-ups of bees going about their business, Joe! Love how you caught them in mid-flight, so to speak. Can really see that pollen is granular, too.
A real pleasure!
:)
Amazing bees.
I can't help loving buttercups though, especially mixed up with sorrel, and ragged robin. Not a colour scheme one might choose in the living room, but nature gets away with it.
As a gardener, I, too, have had problems with the creeping roots of buttercups, but I try to separate the two aspects of the plant. I remember when my children were small - two and four - taking a photograph of them in a field of butter cups. The colour in the photograph faded but not in my mind.
Crow: My camera has a facility to capture object in motion. Instead of trying to adjust aperture to shutter speed, as a proper photographer would have done, I allowed the camera to do the calculations for me.
Nice pictures! I haven´t known that the plant is white. I thought it is red - but I like it. Very nice.
It can be red and sometimes yellow.
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