26 Jul 2009

It was a butterfly sort of day

The weather has been atrocious lately. We had summer for two un-seasonably hot weeks in June. We have returned to the rather more typical English summer weather of continuous rain and grey skies.

But the forecast was for a nice day yesterday – rare that it should occur at a weekend too. So we decided to mark this special occasion with a proper day out. I didn’t want to be anywhere there were drunk chavs lighting barbecues with flame throwers or to be serenaded by obnoxious, undisciplined children. I wanted fresh air, trees, peace and quiet. I wanted to hear nothing but the sound of bird song, bees going about their business and the breeze through the trees rustling leaves. I wanted a nice walk to blow out the cobwebs and ideally I wanted some photo opportunities. I wanted somewhere suitable to eat our picnic and warm sun with a cool breeze. So we didn’t want much really.

We consulted maps for location, packed the picnic basket and cold box and by the time we left we had everything we needed, except one key factor – the weather wasn’t quite as nice as we both hoped and expected. The sky was grey and threatening and the breeze was certainly cooling – a bit too cooling.

But the day gradually improved and in the end, by the time we were walking, it turned out incredibly pleasant. We found ourselves near the Stocks Reservoir in the Forest of Bowland (in north west England for overseas readers) and spent some time walking around the perimeter of the water and found a bird hide on the water’s edge and spent an enjoyable time in there with binoculars. We found a nice picnic table in the sun and enjoyed a leisurely lunch al fresco – although I did have to correct Mr Boo from thinking that ‘al fresco’ meant nekkid.

A view from the bird watching hide we spent some time in.

Part of the path we walked was through some marshland with vegetation growing to chest height – and there were as many insects as I’ve ever seen in one place, it was positively humming with bees and butterflies. Below are some of my photos from the day – which ended up at Beacon Fell, a lifelong favourite spot of ours. Most of the photographs were taken with my compact camera, I decided against carrying my DSLR as we walked – a sure way to ensure plenty to see – although my little camera, with some coaxing, performed pretty well.

Please click the photos to see a larger, sharper view –
they don’t display that well here on the page.

The start of our walk, I love to see old gateposts – no one would bother with that sort of effort these days.

I think these ‘butterflies’ are possibly large skippers.


There is a cluster of paragliders above the distant hill enjoying the last warm thermals of the day.

A Painted Lady butterfly – they travel all the way from North Africa to fetch up in Lancashire – astounding that something so delicate can make the trip. This was taken with my DSLR in the low evening sun.

23 Jul 2009

The biggest raspberry in the world . . .

. . . or the one that got away!

I’ve hardly had chance to get out into the garden this week – there has been torrential rain with a stiff breeze, punctuated by short – very short – spells of bright sunshine. No sooner to get I get my clogs on and head out of the door, than the heavens dump on me again.

But this afternoon I got a decent interval to catch up on some outdoor chores when it remained dry and the air was nice and warm.

As blogged previously, I have some raspberry canes which have done better at actually producing fruit this year than in recent years, largely due to the warm sunny spell we had a week or two ago – I think that was the summer of 2009 and is nothing but a distant memory now. So I had a few fruits to pick that I could see through the foliage. After the poor performance of my canes in recent summers, I planted two new pots of a different variety and the fruits they produce are fabulous – they’re huge, succulent, sweet and flavoursome.

One pot is in a slightly different position than the others and doesn’t seemingly get quite as much full sun and I didn’t help it by putting the least mature canes in that spot. Consequently, the fruit is somewhat behind the rest of my crop (I use this term very loosely, a handful a day hardly qualifies) and I haven’t yet picked any from that pot.

I haven’t grown sweet peas for years and these are my first blooms this year.
They’re such a vibrant colour that you would think it was man-made.

But the largest raspberry that was furthest on had reached absolute perfection today – it was perfectly ripe, flawless and absolutely mahoosive. This was perhaps the largest raspberry I’ve ever seen – absolutely gi-huge – certainly the largest I’ve grown by a significant margin. It was displaying itself proudly at the front of the bough, with a perfect bright green leaf either side of it and a cluster of smaller paler fruits behind. This needed to be recorded for posterity. Whilst my camera was to hand, the memory card was in the card reader upstairs.

This is not the raspberry in question, I took this a while ago to show the average size of the fruits these new canes produce. My fabulous specimen was at least twice this size.

So I returned a little while later with my card, grabbed the camera and headed outside to record this behemoth specimen of raspberry-dom. I actually did a physical double take. I took a few steps back and re-traced my steps, wondering if it had been on the other pot, not the one I was looking at. My prize raspberry was nowhere to be seen. All that remained was a shiny cream coloured hull and two or three pink drupelets of the fruit remaining.

Stop thief!

Someone had stolen my raspberry! I would have taken a photo of the crime scene, but I was too flabbergasted to think to at the time. I can only assume a bird has taken it, but there’s not really anywhere for a bird to perch whilst harvesting the booty and I rarely get birds in that garden because it is so enclosed within steep walls.

So now no one will believe how truly fabulous it was – but I swear – it was . . . . this . . . big!

Thankfully my tomatoes are still right where they should be.
But I shall be organising surveillance as they ripen.
16 Jul 2009

One thing tends to lead to another

For me, a banana has a very narrow window of perfect ripeness for eating. Under-ripe and they’re shiny and not a good taste – over-ripe and they’re soft and have a tendency to cause indigestion. I suspect, for me at least, the window of banana perfection is only about 24 hours or so. But when you get it right, they’re just fabulous.

So looking at the handful of large bananas on the kitchen windowsill, I was sure that window had passed. But I hate waste, so wondered what I could cook with them in – cake was the most obvious answer, but I can’t think that I’ve ever made a banana cake before.

As a diabetic, I don’t bake very often, only usually if entertaining other people and consequently, I don’t keep much in the way of supplies on hand – in fact my usual practice is to stock up on sugar and a cheap margarine tub that will freeze, before Christmas and very often this lasts most of the year – I perhaps buy 3 bags of sugar a year – and two of those will be dark ones for rum butter and the like for the festivities.

Please click the photo for a larger view.
Shame I can’t blog the smell for you.

So I was going to have to find a recipe with a minimal ingredient list and not taking long to prepare. Inspection of the fridge and cupboards found 3 eggs with a ‘use by’ date that has passed at the beginning of the week, an open bag each of pecans and brazil nuts and some raisins – those I do keep in as I like them on my breakfast.

As I had 3 eggs and the recipe required only 1, I decided to double up the quantity and go for a loaf and some muffins – it suggested that either would work. But now I didn’t really have enough bananas, so I ended up using the final egg as the mixture felt a little dry and solid.

By the time I’d added some raisins and chopped nuts , the volume of mix was sufficient for two loaves and a dozen small bun tin muffins. So what started out as trying not to waste five bananas ended up with a pile of baked goods – I have to hope that I can make some room in the freezer. I really enjoyed making it, I haven’t baked like that for a long time.

Please click the photo for a larger view.
6 Jul 2009

One piece at a time . . .

. . . and it didn’t cost him a dime. My garden furniture being removed, that is.

I blogged a couple of months ago about opening the back door to find the early stages of a wasps nest being built against the door frame and how last summer I had watched one particular wasp come to one of my timber seats regularly to strip off the wood for one such nest.

They seemingly take timber from convenient nearby sources and basically chew it into pulp for the paper that goes to make the fascinating many layered paper dome shaped nest – rather like a large paper onion – they inhabit.

Well, there we were on Sunday, enjoying a mid-afternoon brew in the garden between tasks and another wasp landed on the back of the bench I was on and started doing his timber stripping routine. The one I’d watched last year was a little more self-conscious – he didn’t like an audience and if he became aware of me, he’d sidle off down the back of the chair to harvest his building materials unseen.

But this chap wasn’t quite so precious about his task, he quite brazenly worked a few inches from me, the rhythmical sound of his timber work alerting me to his arrival. He would fly off with his cargo and return shortly for some more. It’s fascinating that they return to exactly the spot they left, literally continuing the stripping from where he left off – the whole garden to work in and he flies back to the very fibres he had got to on his last trip, the same as I’d witnessed last summer.

I was also interested that the wasp last year and this fellow had different techniques. Last year he would meticulously roll up the 2mm wide strip he removed as he worked and once it had become quite a bulky chunk under his chin, he’d secure it and fly off. This chap on Sunday was somewhat more haphazard in his technique. He seemingly stripped fibres off loosely and when he was satisfied he had a decent quantity, he’d rear up on his back legs, sort it out with his front legs, tucking it into a loose bundle and when he was happy it was safely gathered together, he’d fly off.

I suspect that he’s young and still has learning to do – he didn’t appear quite as efficient as his predecessor.

He seemed to gather it loosely, then rear up on his hind legs in order to secure his load with his front legs, before take off. Please click the photo for a larger view.