Autumn 8

Clearing and yet more clearing.

Sunday 25th October, 2015.

Wednesday morning: If all goes according to plan this will be a short week - as far as the blog is concerned, anyway.  I am going to make a determined effort to get back to writing new posts during the weekend even when photos are few and far between.  

It was dark and drizzly when I got up just before seven.  It may remain drizzly but at least the mornings will be lighter next week after summer time ends and the clocks go back an hour.  We revert to GMT during the early hours of Sunday morning.  This reminds me of a silly running joke on a comedy radio show in South Africa.  It was broadcast in the olden days before political correctness was invented and was called “Snoektown Calling”.  It featured a spoof news bulletin which was read in an ethnic Cape accent and was always introduced by the line “The time is six o’clock Greenwich.  Meantime here is the news.”

Our gardening news is that I continued with the clearing under the hawthorns in the afternoon but only managed to cut two muck buckets of old weeds, etc.  

Thursday:  Another dry day and yet more clearing in the back garden.  True to form, I kept changing from one area to another.  

I started under the plum tree and came across a bumblebee clinging to a stem of hedge woundwort which I had just cut.  At first I thought it was dead but it waved a leg at me - so I took it down to the house and it posed for a photo session.   

I wasted a lot of time trying to make a positive identification of the bumblebee which was either Bombus lucorum (white-tailed) or Bombus terrestris (buff-tailed).  To complicate the issue, the males of both species have white tails.  And to complicate the issue even further there is contradictory information on the internet.  One site said that buff-tailed bees are only seen until the end of August.  This led me to believe that it might be a white-tailed bumblebee because they were supposed to be around until November.  But this theory was scuppered by another website which said that the buff-tailed bumblebees fly from June to October in Northumberland.  And yet another site claimed that in the south of England - in areas where there is a suitable micro-climate, and gardens with winter-flowering shrubs - the buff-tailed colonies can be active throughout winter.  There was even a report in 2008 which mentioned that an over-wintering  colony had been seen in the Wildlife Garden at the Natural History Museum in London.

I am almost certain that my bumblebee is a buff-tailed male.  It looked too small to be a female and the hairs on the tail look mainly white with a buff edge and it has black hairs on its face.  

I read a very useful article on which bits of a bumblebees anatomy are important for photographic identification - but unfortunately I only read it after I had taken the photos.   Another way of telling a male from a female bumblebee is to examine the femur of the back leg - the males have sparse hairs because they don’t have a pollen basket.   I obviously spent far too much time focusing on his face instead of his hind leg and hairy behind.

Then I left him in a Welsh poppy in case he fancied some pollen.

While I was searching for bumblebee ID information, I came across an explanation for the loud buzzing by the bee which I saw on another Welsh poppy last week.  Apparently the buzzing is a deliberate tactic to create a vibration which causes the flowers to release pollen.

The only other incident of minor interest in the morning was finding that our red toadstools were upside down.  I wasted some more time trying to work out whether they had been blown over by the strong overnight wind or felled by a slug eating through the stem.  My final decision was that they had been blown over after the stems had been partly severed by a slug.

I managed to cut four muck buckets of old vegetation so that we will have a full load to drive to the tip before shopping tomorrow morning.

Friday: There were short periods of light drizzly rain in the morning but it was mostly dry.  During a sunny spell and I saw a speckled wood butterfly fluttering around by the “waterfall”.  It sunbathed on a chunk of quartz for a while but didn’t stay for long.

Now the raspberry canes and ferns have been trimmed, I have a good view of the top of the waterfall from the study window.  There is only a trickle of water at present and it is a favourite place for the little birds to land for a drink.  I must clean the back windows soon so that I can take some more bird photos.

I decided to rest on yesterday’s laurels and have a break from clearing the garden.  It isn’t very cold but the strong wind makes it rather unpleasant for working outside.  The forecast for tonight is rather alarming:

Friday, 23 October 2015

Weather: Cloudy, some patchy rain possible at times, turning more persistent evening and heavy overnight

Wind: S-SW 20-25 increasing 25-35 perhaps 40

Visibility: Moderate/good occasionally poor later, hill fog

Temperature: Min. Air 8°C and Max. Air 14°C

Rainfall (mm): 10-20 (30-40 over high ground)

Comments: Strong wind/gales developing. Heavy Rain tonight may cause some localized flooding especially where drains become blocked with fallen leaves

Saturday: There wasn’t quite as much rain as we expected last night but there was enough to make the garden rather slushy.  I decided to cut back a couple of muck buckets of ferns on the wildflower bank where the water runs off quickly.

Later I prowled around looking for things to photograph.  There wasn’t much but I found some autumn colours.  The viburnum in the back garden is looking quite colourful.

The foliage looked even brighter when I stood under the shrub and the sun shone through the leaves.

The view across the glen is also more interesting than usual with some of the broadleaf trees below the conifers changing colour.  Most of the larches were felled a few years ago but they missed some at the edge of the plantation.  Their golden needles stand out against the evergreen conifers at this time of year.  Our big holly down by the road managed to sneak into the lower left corner of the photo.  It has a good crop of berries this year.

I am puzzled by the fact that our lace-cap hydrangeas are going spotty as they fade.  I can’t remember whether they have done this on previous years.

Sunday: I went up to the top of our garden to chase a trespassing black and white cat and noticed that I had forgotten to clear up the last bits of holly that I cut in the top of our neighbour’s garden a couple of weeks ago.  So I went over with a tarpaulin and tidied up.

Then it was back to our garden to cut the last of the ferns on the wildflower bank.  Another two muck buckets full today.  I think I will try to maintain this quota.  Going on about buckets of weeds and ferns isn’t exactly fascinating but I feel that it may help me motivate myself if I write down my targets and record my progress.  I want to finish clearing the daffodil and snowdrop beds by the end of this month.

Instead of a another photo of the garden, here is one taken from the garden (or from our front patio to be exact) of the moon.  The island is a great place for star-gazing when it isn’t covered with cloud or hill fog because there is very little light pollution.  But I still find it incredible that my little camera can capture an image of the craters on the moon.

Autumn 7

I can't believe it's Tuesday

Tuesday 20th October, 2015

I can’t believe it’s Tuesday already.  The weeks seem to be passing faster and faster and I seem to have less and less to write about.  I tried to fit in a short walk before writing this post, in the hope of finding something interesting to photograph, but my plans were scuppered by a combination of Rugby World Cup quarter final matches, visits to the dentist and plain laziness.  Or maybe my current lethargy is caused by PTSD - not post traumatic stress disorder but Pre-Christmas traumatic stress disorder brought on by the shock of seeing Christmas puddings on display in the supermarket at the beginning of October.

As the days shorten, there is less and less life in the garden.  Most of the bumblebees and butterflies have moved on to another stage in their life cycle or have started their hibernation.  There aren’t even many midges left which is a blessing.  

The variety of birds visiting the feeder is shrinking as more and more desert us at the end of the breeding season to join their winter flocks, or go further afield in search of a warmer climate.  The first regular customers to depart were the greenfinches and lesser redpolls.  Then the goldfinches left, although we have seen one or two stragglers.  Now the number of siskins has dropped dramatically.  I only saw solitary siskins on the feeder earlier this week but there were at least two around because I saw a male and a female.  They looked a bit lost and perched in the tree looking around as though they were waiting for a friend.  On Wednesday morning the little female was on the niger feeder and appeared to be injured because she was only perching on one leg.

After eating she flew off quite strongly.  She was back on Thursday and later in the week I saw an able-bodied female as well as the little one-legged one - so there are at least three remaining in the vicinity.

Now that autumn is here, the fair weather friends have nearly all departed and we will soon be left with the year round residents - the chaffinches, the tits, the robins and the dunnocks, who seem to be back to stay after going missing for the whole summer.

But autumn brings gains as well as losses.  The crabapple is laden with fruit for the blackbirds.

The first nerines have opened - almost a month later than last year.  

There are even a few autumn hues in the garden.  The remaining leaves on the biggest beech by the road are gold and copper . . .

. . . and the Virginia creeper on the garage wall is looking lovely.

I was surprised to see Fly Agaric in the garden again.  They used to grow under the big birch tree but disappeared many years ago after the tree blew down during winter gales.  Now there are two toadstools under our young birch tree that Tim planted behind the house.   I was a bit concerned that the fungus might have contributed to the downfall of our big birch but I need not have worried because I have read that Fly agaric is mycorrhizal, forming a mutually beneficial relationship with its host tree.

If anyone is reading this blog, they must think that I am obsessed by the seasons.  I am.  There is something magical about the seasons, especially for someone like me.  I spent the first half of my life in a subtropical region of South Africa where one season can hardly be distinguished visually from another - even though the temperature varies between cool in winter and unpleasantly hot in summer.  All the major religious festivals were celebrated  in the wrong seasons.  We may have been living in Africa but those of us descended from earlier immigrants from Britain, were still culturally European.  We sent each other Christmas cards decorated with holly and ivy, or robins, or snow scenes . . .  in the middle of summer.  We  ate chocolate eggs and bunnies in autumn to celebrate Easter and the start of spring in the northern hemisphere.  So many of the things that I read about in books were missing from my life - no snow, no bluebells, no blackberries, no holly, no robins.  I felt deprived.  

I was born towards the end of the war and of course times have changed.  Cultural ties with Europe may be disappearing among young South Africans of European descent now that they are part of the famous Rainbow Nation.  I could see a  change even while we were living there.  When I started school we sang patriotic British songs - Hearts of oak, D’ye ken John Peel, etc., and learned some rudimentary British history, and were an enthusiastic part of the Commonwealth.  By the time our children started school, South Africa had become a Republic.  The anti-British Nationalist government was entrenched in power and nobody kenned John Peel any more.

But that is all in the past, thank goodness.  Now I can enjoy the gradual change in seasons on this beautiful Island - photograph the bluebells, pick blackberries, walk in the snow (occasionally), and be entertained by the robins in the garden (every day).  I even have more than my fair share of holly in the garden.

I have finished denuding the holly hedge in the front garden.  I cut all the fuchsia (which is growing up through the holly) down to ground level.  Fuchsia and holly don’t combine well because the fuchsia grows so much faster than the holly.  Although fuchsia can make a pretty hedge, if it is clipped frequently and grows in a sunny position so that it flowers well, it is no good in a mixed hedge . . . especially in a mixed hedge in a damp, shady position where it hardly flowers at all. On Friday I finished the job by cutting through the thick stems with the electric saw.  I needed to do the sawing from our neighbour’s side of the hedge because the hedge grows on a bank and it is easier to work from the lower side.  So I spent Thursday clearing access on the other side of the hedge.  It seems rather silly to be spending so much time working next door when there is so much that needs to be done in our own garden but it is the only way to tame our mutual hedge.

Here are some before and after photos.

The next task is to cut down the old weed/wild flower/fern growth from the areas which have been planted with spring bulbs.  I have started under the hawthorns behind the house.  It is tedious and back-breaking work but it only needs to be done once a year.

I was devastated to find another fatality -  little dead dunnock - on the path behind the house on Saturday.  I cannot be sure whether one of the trespassing cats killed it or whether it panicked and flew into a window but I have been thinking dark thoughts about cats and pondering  the possibility of getting a cat-hating guard dog for the birds.  Apart from the difficulty of persuading Tim that we need a dog, the main problem is that I like the next door cats and I don’t think it would be possible to explain to a dog that some cats are more acceptable than others.  The cats haunting our garden come from across the road and the worst ones are the multiple cats that moved in with their owners about a year ago. I have heard rumours that there are eight of them.

On  Friday the colchicums were glowing in the late  morning sun.  I took some photos but the results were disappointing.  The highlighted areas were glary and over-exposed.  I had the same problem last week in Ballaglass.  Some of the photos were spoiled by small patches of sunlight which bleached out all the detail. So I tried the colchicums again on Monday when there was no sun.  It had rained overnight and although the rain had stopped it was one of those still, overcast days when the air is so damp that it might as well be raining.  I was much happier with the results.

Glary sunlight may be a problem for flower photography but it enhanced the bright colours of this goldfinch.

I have been putting off tidying up the flowers behind the house because they still have a few blossoms and may be useful to some late insects.  On a warmish afternoon, while I was cutting back some plants that had flopped over a path, I heard loud buzzing.  It was a bumblebee, quite a large one, probably a young female which will be hibernating for the winter.  She was taking advantage of the sunny weather to get a last meal of pollen before the colder weather arrives.  She was visiting this Welsh poppy.

She was too heavy to feed on the purple toadflax which the smaller bumblebees love.  It is just a weed but is a wonderful source of food for the pollinators because it flowers from June all the way through till late autumn.

While I was taking those flower photos I kept hearing the noise of flapping wings as the little birds flew around in the tree above the feeders.  I thought it would be a good plan to photograph them from the path behind the house instead of through the window but it was easier said than done.  The birds thought I was too close for comfort and were just flying down to the sunflower seed feeder, grabbing a seed and shooting back up into the tree.  Timing the shots was difficult and focus was also a problem because the feeder was swinging around.  I took twelve  photos before giving up - seven of a blurred feeder and no bird because I took the photo just too late, two blurred photos of a pair of coal tits,  an even more blurred one of a coal tit and a blue tit, an almost acceptable one of a great tit and this one of a blue tit.  It isn’t a good photo but it is the best of a very bad bunch.

Autumn 6

Two walks and some pruning.

Monday 12th October, 2015

It is Sunday already.  Grey and overcast but at least dry.  It hasn’t been a great week for photography.  That is a complaint that I will be repeating . . .  and repeating again, repeatedly until spring arrives.  The only photos that I have taken are the ubiquitous sunrises . . .

. . . and a short record of a walk in Brookdale plantation on Thursday morning.  I think I will wait until tomorrow to finish this post so that we can go for a walk in Ballaglass Glen in search of some more interesting photographs.  There may even be some autumn leaves because a few of the trees are already starting to change colour.

This past week has been devoted mainly to pruning buddleia and general clearing up.  For the past four or five years, I have been cutting the buddleia down to a couple of shoots on the new growth.  So it is gradually getting taller.  I think it has reached the limit at which it can be pruned without resorting to a ladder.  Next year I will do a radical prune with the electric saw and start from scratch again.  

Nearly all the wild angelica has been cut down to stop it spreading too much seed and I have started on the rather painful task of cutting fuchsia out of the holly hedge in the front garden.  The holly will never form a thick hedge as long as it is over-shadowed by the faster growing fuchsia.  I had to buy a new pair of light rachet secateurs.  The holly hedge killed the first pair.  The little pin which attached the blade to the rachet mechanism got metal fatigue, fell out, and disappeared.

I cut back most of the echinops a couple of weeks ago.  Although it is a member of the thistle family, and is much loved by pollinators, the seeds are ignored by our finches even though some websites recommend planting Globe thistle (Echinops ritro) to attract birds to the garden. Recently I noticed siskins feeding on the meadowsweet seedheads up on the wild flower bank so they are not against finding their own seeds even when niger seeds are available at the feeding station.  And I have seen goldfinches taking knapweed seed.  It was a mystery why they were boycotting the echinops.  I picked a few of the last husks which hadn’t fallen from the flower heads and examined them but couldn’t find any seed inside.  Maybe the answer is that my plants are not producing seed.  I shall have to investigate further.

There weren’t many unusual sightings during the week but I was delighted to see a dunnock yesterday.  I saw it twice (probably the same one), first perched on the wooden fence and then on the ground under the bird feeders.  They used to visit the garden every day but I have only seen one a couple of times this year.  The Silver Y moth (or one of its friends or relations) has been back but I didn’t get another photo.  The first time it returned it disappeared while I was fetching my camera, and the second time I saw it the light was too dim for a photo.  There have been indications of other visitors, seen and unseen.  I wasn’t very pleased about having to clear up messes from trespassing cats before mowing - but I was delighted to find some smaller and darker messes which could be evidence of a nocturnal visiting hedgehog.

The only bumblebees still working in the garden are the little common carders.  They seem to be able to survive cooler temperatures than the other varieties and are still quite vigorous.  According to The Wildlife Trusts website they can be seen feeding on flowers right through from early spring to November.  Their website also mentioned that the white tailed bumblees should be around until November - but the last ones I saw were a couple of disconsolate dew drenched males on October 3.  They were waiting hopefully for some warming sunshine after spending the night on the sedums in the back garden.

Friday’s walk in Brookdale turned into a photo session for the most attractive conifers in the plantation.  Tim told me that they are Noble firs - Abies procera.  I am sure he is right although they are not listed among the trees grown in the Island’s plantations.  The only closely related trees are the red firs - Abies magnifica.  After returning home I discovered that the best way to tell them apart is to examine the needles.  The Noble firs have a groove on the upper side of their needles.  It isn’t possible to be 100% certain just using photographic evidence but our firs do look rather groovy.

They also have lovely blue new foliage . . .

And huge cones which disintegrate before they fall.

The shape of the bracts made me think of stealth bombers.  But on second thoughts they may look more like simple paper aeroplanes.

After an overnight, or early morning, shower we had good weather for our drive down to Ballaglass this morning.  A lot of work has been done in the glen since our last visit.  There were no “footpath closed” signs and the fences, bridges and even the path had been repaired or replaced.

We headed for the ancient horse chestnuts in search of autumn colours but were disappointed.  Most of their leaves were still green . . .

. . . although there were a few patches of yellow and bronze.

We walked down the path to the river and crossed the bridge at the top of the glen.  The level of the water in the river was fairly low but it was very pretty and I kept stopping to take photos.

There were patches of blue sky overhead, framed with gold-tinted leaves.

The sweet chestnuts were shedding their leaves and their prickly pods.  We are too far north to get any worthwhile chestnuts, most of the nuts do not develop, but the trees keep trying.

Across the river the rocks had been worn into funnels and hollows by the movement of the water and the grinding effect of loose stones.

We crossed the new bridge and walked along the path in search of a sloping rock near a picnic spot.  The only flowers we had seen so far were fuchsias and montbretia, but we came across an unexpected clump of goldenrod.  It was past its best so I decided to focus on the water and just use the flowers for a blur of colour.

This is Chrissie’s rock.  She was our dearly loved golden Schipperke and whenever we stopped here she walked down this rock to drink from the river.  We got really worried when the rock was wet and slimy and the river was high as we had visions of her slipping into the water and being swept downstream but luckily it never happened.

We turned back downstream and I noticed these reflections on the water.  After looking at the photo, I wondered whether the first landscape impressionist artists got their inspiration from reflections on moving water.

Further downstream was the new bridge.

We walked back to the car along a new and vastly improved path - but I felt rather nostalgic for the old path.  It was less convenient with its muddy patches, wet rocks and mossy roots but it had more character.

On the way home we stopped on the road to Ballajora so that I could take a photo of Maughold village (on the left) and the lighthouse on the far side of Port Mooar.

Then I looked across the sea to the distant Cumbrian mountains with Sellafield on the coast - a study in blue.

Autumn 5

To post or not to post . . . ?

Monday, 5th October, 2015.

It was one of those weeks when there didn’t seem to be much happening.  Well not much of interest anyway.  Perhaps a week’s silence would be preferable to boring waffle but it is a rainy Monday and waffling is more fun than doing housework.  If you don’t believe that gardening is a no-no today, here is the forecast “Strong winds with a risk of gales & heavy rain creating standing water in places“.

The garden is enjoying the rain.  It has been rather dry during the second half of September.  Tim heard on the regional news that last month was the second sunniest September on the Island since records began.  The sunniest September was back in 1991 - our first summer in the glen.

A more suitable title for this post could be “More of the Same” or simply “Ditto”.   Almost all of the gardening activity was a repeat of last week’s assault on the holly hedge.  I thought it would be a quick job to snip off the bits that I couldn’t reach from our side . . . then I hoped to finish by the end of September . . . but I ended up spending a few hours every day for ten days working on our neighbour’s side of the hedge.  

The final section was more like a holly thicket than a hedge. Even worse, it was a tangle of holly, bracken and brambles.   The only consolation was finding a few ripe blackberries.   Some of the holly stems were growing out at an angle and were so thick that I needed the electric saw to cut through them but I was determined to end up with something which was more or less the width of a normal hedge. It all looks rather bare now but holly shoots out vigorously after being pruned and it should look a lot greener in the spring.   I finished most of the pruning on Saturday, and on Sunday we cut up the last branches and took two car loads of holly out to the tip.  

The last bit (viewed from our side) - it doesn’t look much but it was the tip of a substantial iceberg.

The hedge has been tamed . . . all pruned down to a few inches above the wooden fence.

But it isn’t quite the end of the holly hedge saga.  The section in the front garden, which was cut  last autumn, still needs to be trimmed.  But it should be an easy task and can wait for a week or two..  

I think my next project will be to cut back the buddleia.  Defra (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on the mainland) doesn’t approve of buddleia.  According to the BBC, “Defra says the highly-dispersible seed of what was originally a garden plant has resulted in extensive buddleia populations in the wild, where the shrub has often out-competed native vegetation and reduced biodiversity.

Gardeners are being asked by Defra to remove seed heads after flowering to prevent its spread before it becomes "ubiquitous".

The plant can cause damage to buildings, such as crumbling brickwork - its tiny wind-blown seeds can germinate in decaying mortar.”

It may be an invasive alien species - but I like to have it in the garden for the butterflies.  We have five bushes although I may remove one because it is growing in the shade and is ignored by the butterflies.  The usual advice is to prune buddleia in spring but that doesn’t work well in our garden because the winter gales tend to break off the long branches.  Our plants survive better if they are cut back before winter.  Early pruning also means that the seedheads are removed before they have a chance to ripen so there is no danger to the environment from my plants.  

Alien seedhead - preparing to invade!

The white buddleia which is more the size of a small tree than a shrub.  It would be impossible to reach the seedheads to cut them off before pruning . . . much better to do both at the same time.

There is a difference of opinions between some of our plants regarding the state of the seasons.  The azalea mollis has donned autumn colours before losing its leaves . . .

. . .but the roses refuse to believe that summer is over and have produced a late flush of flowers.

There is still some colour in the garden.  The colour of the hydrangea flowers becomes more intense as they age.  We usually say that old flowers are fading - but hydrangeas seem to unfade.

And the evergreen agapanthus, which usually refuses to flower, has three flowers this year.

The Japanese anemones are going over but there are still a few flowers on the deeper pink variety which usually gets overlooked because the dusky pink ones are much more vigorous.

And the tiny cyclamen are blushing almost unseen under the lilac.

Yesterday evening, when I was returning to the house after taking the photo of the buddleia and the “short back and sides” hedge, I noticed a strange moth feeding on the purple toadflax and centranthus.  My first thought was . . . hummingbird hawkmoth? - but it obviously wasn’t.  It was difficult to get a good photo because it kept flapping its wings while it was feeding and moved frequently from one flower to another.  It took me two days of searching on the internet and in my insect book until I discovered its identity.  I am almost certain that it is a Silver Y.  There are also two types of Golden Y but the colour of my moth looks too pale and the Silver Y is the only one, according to my book, which “continues to beat wings while feeding and appears as a grey blur”.  It is a migrant from the Mediterranean region and will have to return to warmer climes if it wants to survive the winter.

Some other internet research, which wasted even more time, started after one of my sessions of bird counting.  The title of a book that I read many years ago came into my mind while I was watching the birds dart around so fast that I couldn’t tell whether they were coming or going.  It was a book by Peter Tinniswood and was called “Except You’re a Bird”.  I vaguely remembered that the title was part of a quotation and resorted to the internet because I didn’t want to go up to the loft to sort through dusty boxes of books.  I found that the original quotation was by Sir Boyle Roche, an eighteenth century Irish politician - although Tinniswood apparently

mis-identified him in the book as Boyd Roche.  It is thought that Sir Boyle Roche may have been a model for Sheridan's Mrs Malaprop.  Anyway, Sir Boyle, who was excusing an absence in Parliament said “Mr Speaker, it is impossible I could have been in two places at once, unless I were a bird.”

The thought crossed my mind that the birds most likely to be in two places at once were my little favourites, the coal tits.

I carried on checking the quotation and discovered that it was a favourite example of “Irish Bull”.  I hadn’t come across this term before but found this explanation An Irish bull refers to a statement that defies logic or syntax in some manner, yet manages to be communicative. The word "Irish" was not always attached to utterances with apparent inconsistencies and paradoxes, but by the time Anglo-Irish novelist Maria Edgeworth wrote her essay on Irish Bulls in 1802, the practice of declaring the bulls Irish was well established. One assumes that the Irish were targeted with prefixing bull due to their penchant to use colourful metaphors. The meaning of "bull" here is a "self-contradictory proposition," and the word may derive from the Old French boule or bole that referred to "deceit" or "fraud."

But that wasn’t the end of the story.  It turns out that the “unless I were a bird” quote by Sir Boyle is not an example of Irish Bull after all.  It was actually a quotation.  He was quoting from Thomas Jevon’s play The Devil of a Wife and the passage is:

Wife: I cannot be in two places at once.

Husband (Rowland): Surely no, unless thou wert a bird.

So it appears that there has been a long history of misquoting and mis-attribution of quotes although with the advent of the internet and the ubiquitous forwarded messages it has now been turned into an art form.  

A last thought on the subject.  It seems to have gone out of fashion in these politically correct times but I have a vague memory from the distant past of my mother saying “That sounds rather Irish” when I said something illogical.  In retrospect it occurs to me that it wasn’t very diplomatic of her because her mother in law’s father was Irish.

I missed seeing the blood moon last Monday morning.  We would only have seen the red colour after the eclipse (at about 4-30 in the morning) and I am almost certain that the moon would have been obscured by Skyhill by that time.  I would have set the alarm if I could have been sure to see it from the garden but it seemed too much of a hassle to get up and go out in the car.  Instead here is a photo of the morning star.  I was quite proud to get a circular image with a handheld camera.  Last time I tried to photograph this star it looked like a white tadpole.

And here is yet another sunrise, maybe the last.  I think I shall have to give up taking sunrise photos.  Both my daughters have posted sunrise/sunset photos on their Facebook pages recently - and they are far more spectacular than my photos.