Summertime blues

There comes a time in late summer, when the flower colours seem to tip over into cool soft blues, and mauves, leaving the hot vibrant colours of summer behind. In the garden it is the hydrangeas’ and Michaelmas daisies, in the verges it is the delicate harebells.

Hope Valley, from Mam Torr

In one corner of our field is it’s the devil’s-bit scabious, it’s always a relief when I see it flower, I’d hate to lose it.

We’ve just one plant, its buds are shaped like plump blackberries (please forgive the less than pin sharp images, its been a windy day, with just my phone camera to hand).

The bees love the pincushion flowers.

Devil’s-bit scabious gets its Latin name – ‘Scabere’, meaning to scratch – from its traditional use as a treatment for skin conditions, such as scabies and the sores of bubonic plague. Its common name arises from the fact that its roots look truncated, as if bitten off, legend has it, by the Devil.

The one plant, sitting at the edge of the field, under a young oak, looks kind of vulnerable, I’m on a mission to try and increase the number of plants.

In ‘Flora of Derbyshire’, by William Richard Linton, published in 1903 it describes the devils-bit (field) scabious as being ‘Plentiful along the old road.’ That very road is just 50m away from this specimen,and I’ve never seen any others nearby in the 30+ years we lived here, I feel duty bound to make amends, its the least I can do seeing as I can’t reintroduce the corncrake to our field!

I love the gold embossed cover of the book.

Now to order some more seed.

A wagtail’s tale

We’ve had a lovely little family of pied wagtails nesting under the roof of the barn.

I’m not sure exactly home many chicks fledged, certainly at least one (and sadly one that didn’t make it). The parents certainly grafted, with the male endlessly on the move hunting for food.

The male was ringed, I’m not sure how common a thing that is, I got frustratingly close to working out the ring details, but not close enough.

I so enjoyed their industry and their chatter. I never managed to capture how the male would land on PV panels on the barn roof, give the dipping wag of its tail and slide elegantly down from the top to the bottom of the panel, it amused me for hours, I think he might have enjoyed it too.

When the chicks were hatched the female was hunting too. She got rich picking from the ants that were starting to fly, emerging from a hole in the wall under my office window.

This was just a couple of days before the true ‘flying ant day’ when a swarm emerged.

She just picked them off, there was no escape.

A flying feast.

The chick I did see, hung out in a willow tree, calling for yet more food, the parents both feeding and chasing off persistent predatory magpies.

Then it was quiet, the nest empty, and its residents off on the wing. I hope they will return next year, it’s the first time they nested with us. I like to think (hope) it is because of the changes we’ve made to how we mange both the field and the grass around the house and apple trees, we cut much less, and much later, and I think this is making a big improvement to the number of insect there are around.

Wherever the wind blows

These thistle seeds will be going too

Every seed is a wonder of design and engineering.

I love to see insects and birds feasting on the thistles, but when it get to this stage my inner gardener start to panic.

Not everyone wants or loves a thistle, and there can be too many, and in the wrong place, on pasture land and on land used for silage and hay; the law says so.

Who knew how many dilemmas there are in growing a more diverse garden that has a rich diversity of plants. We go for a gentle ‘curation’ so no one species is allowed to get too thuggish. This page looked to offer some sound advice.