Seeping poison

There is one very tiny substance that is creeping into almost every food item that is bought and yet some would say is nearly the most dangerous thing that can be ingested by both people and animals. It has four separate names depending from where it is sourced. These are: secalin, hordein, gliadin and avenin. Secalin is found in rye which used to be called secale; hordein is found in barley; gliadin is found in wheat, avenin is found in oats. All of these come under the heading of ‘gluten’ and this is the poison that attacks every organ of the body from the tips of the toes to the top of the brain.

Years ago, it was thought that gluten was dangerous and life threatening only to those people who developed Coeliac Disease. It has been found that there are hundreds of diseases that are brought on by gluten whilst others are made worse by gluten. The chances are that if a person has developed an illness and a cure hasn’t been found then it is wise to consider the possibility that gluten has had some part to play in this. Sometimes, if gluten is removed completely from the diet, a person will recover (as long as they never eat gluten again). Other times, the gluten has caused so much damage that although it is necessary to remove gluten from the diet the damage is such, that a person’s health has been destroyed completely from achieving complete full health again.

Sweet, sweet pea–perennial pea, everlasting pea

I have always loved sweet peas. The only problem being that the majority are annual and require planting each year and then need to have canes placed near to them so that they have somewhere to climb. A few years ago, I came across a perennial variety – how wonderful! Imagine a beautiful pea flower that comes up year after year!

Last year I saw some advertised on the Web and sent for them .. I must admit they looked extremely fragile and far more frail than I would have liked. So I placed them on a windowsill for a short while to enable them to strengthen up before planting them out. This is what they looked like when they arrived:

Young perennial pea plants

Most of them appeared to Winter quite well but only a couple have made it to the point of flowering – the remainder have simply withered away or been eaten by slugs. Above is my very first perennial pea flower to open just four days a go.

Perennial peas plant flowering – (Lathyrus latifolius)

Now just a few days later and they have blossomed into beautiful posy heads of flowers.

 

They are so pretty that I will cross my fingers that they do indeed survive the Winter and bloom again next year.

 

Forum/forums

People often skirt widely away from this name when they see it as an option on a search engine, probably because they do not understand what they really are and how useful they can be.

If you have never used a forum then now is the time to start. Firstly, in the search engine type in the topic that you are interested in finding information on then add the word forum – example -

Fishing Forum

http://www.fishing-forum.info/

To get the most out of any forum you really need to join. That way you can see everything that is written – all the questions that have been asked and answered by others and ask your own …. don’t be shy.  You can have an anonymous name - like Alfred the Angler, FishingFriend or may be flipper fin. You can ask awkward questions, ask for tips or advice or offer your own. It is a brilliant way to find out things that are important to you and often get more in depth answers than looking for the same information from a website.

If you have a complex question then it is best to join several forums and type your question into all of them – that way you will have a wide spread of answers to consider and act upon.

Alien

I feel that this year we are experiencing a different planet to that which we are used to. There doesn’t appear to be any corner of the globe that in some way or other hasn’t been affected by unusual weather patterns. Flooding has been occurring year upon year and many places that were considered to be safe and untouched have had deep torrents rip through houses leaving thick sludge over floors and furnishings. Month after month of persistent rainfall has caused mud slides and rock slides. Whilst some have experienced being scorched crisp until the ground became like broken rock. We are being told that even the ice caps are melting with an increasing speed that is unknown in our history. Yet, how soon we put this aside and choose to forget when our own regions, our own circumstances are back to normal.

Perhaps, it is time to grow up – take responsibility – clean up our act – change what we are doing before this beautiful planet becomes an alien world and we no longer recognise any part of it.

Nature’s clock

It is wonderful that despite being delicate, how resilient some plants are. Even though we are having persistent heavy showers the beautiful, fluffy, soft dandelion clocks remain so perfectly formed and hold onto their seeds until the showers end and they are able to dry out their pappus. The pappus is made up of fine hairs which are whisked up by the wind rather like a parachute carrying its precious cargo an achene, the seed.

Dandelion clock showing the pappus and achenes - Taraxacum officinale

Red Lily Beetle or Lily Beetle - Lilioceris lilii

Although it is June, we are having heavy downpours of rain. Everything is utterly sodden and dripping wet. In between the heavy rain showers there are some unusual sightings. Here is one of them it is a Red lily beetle or Lily beetle .. it is known by both names. The adult beetle burrows down into the soil in late Autumn and will spend the Winter anywhere underground for protection. The beetles usually wait until a bright sunny April day to push up out of the earth and then they begin to look for lily leaves to lay their eggs. They continue laying eggs throughout the Summer. The eggs are laid in small numbers on the underside of the lily leaves and once they have hatched the plant is ravaged.

This beetle was happily clinging to a Purple Loosestrife leaf, which is nowhere near to my lilies .. but I am wondering if the beetle found one of my lily leaves or whether it flew off into someone else’s garden!

 

Red Lily Beetle or Lily Beetle - Lilioceris lilii

Lizzie Marshall - Lizme

A few months ago, I happened upon an artist called Lizzie Marshall. You may well know her as Lizme, for that is the name that she uses to sign her paintings with.

I was captivated with her distinctive style and her use of colour which immediately draw you into her pictures. She was born in South Yorkshire, which is as different to the rest of Yorkshire as Wales is to Scotland. It is the area of Robin Hood and the longbow strained from the yew trees (Taxus baccata). The people of this area are forthright with a depth of character and a sweet truth which makes them earnest, loyal and hard working. There is a purity of soul and an appreciation of natural things, which I think is present in Lizzie Marshall’s paintings.

 

Link for Lizme’s Website

Link for Lizzie Marshall’s day-to-day Blog

 

Lizzie Marshall, a Yorkshire artist

Eye of newt ..

This time of the year the pond appears to grow blanket weed like a candyfloss machine. The weed holds onto the sides like thrift clings on the edge of cliff tops. It then weaves its way through the oxygenating plants twisting and choking them so thickly that the fish have to fight for both light and space. Having tried everything on the market there still appears to be nothing quite as effective as a hands on approach. A gentle tug until the slimy green wispy web of a million plants has been prized off its moorings. Trying to untangle its weavings from other plants is not quite so easily achieved.

The most difficult task is to try and avoid damaging the natural wildlife that lives in both the shallows and the depths of a pond. This time, in amongst the pile of slimy blanket weed there appeared to be a black shiny eye peeping back .. it was a young newt. The sweetest of amphibians had been rescued and placed gently back in the water of the pond, once most of the blanket weed had been removed.

Common Newt or Smooth Newt (Triturus vulgaris) – young newt

The English drought of 2012

The Winter was considerably dry and with the lack of usual rainfall in the previous Autumn that meant we were reliant on heavy snowfalls and a wet Spring to top up the water table. We did have snow but nothing like the quantity we needed for ensuring plentiful water to be deposited in rivers,lakes, canals and reservoirs. Winter tumbled on into March and suddenly we had Mediterranean weather – beautiful sunshine and temperatures in the lower 20’s (Celsius). People tore off their Winter garb and quickly embraced T-shirts and light-weight Summer garments.

Several rivers have caused concern including the river Rye in Yorkshire, which dried up in places. This meant that the Environment Agency had to take action and save as many fish as possible from areas where the river had ‘ponded.’ 

As soon as we turned April over on the calendar their was talk of drought – hosepipe bans – water shortages – problems with dry crumbling soils – spoiled crops . . . then the rains began. Not the usual light showers followed by hours of sunshine but relentless heavy battering drops that thundered on and on day after day, April temperatures fell back down the scale.

Now we are well into May and still we are having showers and bleak, grey days and frosts in many areas at night. The water table in many areas has increased to such a point that most of the country is now not in drought, though the South-East is still in need of quite a bit more rainfall. Areas of the country have received quite large deposits of snow and others have had heavy hail storms. The rest of us are secretly longing for a lick of sunshine and a bit of warmth, perhaps just a hint that it may not be too long before we can don some Summer clothes and share some space with the bees!

May be?

This is the first year that I can remember, in such a long time, that English bluebells are still flowering well into the ‘merry month of May.’

Every year, as a child, my father would take me bluebell picking. Most of the bluebells in our area lined country lanes and grew in thick masses on the far side of brooks, streams and deep ditches, all of which supported tall, broad-leafed stinging nettles. For every other bluebell picked came a soft hair brushed against naked skin, a piercing pain and a bump or two as the rash appeared. Then a mixture of pain and itch and the urgent need to pick a dock leaf to rub on the wound and ease the rash.

Wasp wave

A warning was issued yesterday that we may well be in for a swell in the number of wasps and wasp nests this year owing to the type of Winter we have experienced. When anyone mentions the word wasp most of us think of the yellow and black insect that dons a painful punch in the form of a sting. There are however many more varieties the largest of which is the Hornet (Vespa crabro), followed by the two versions that we see around sweet sticky foods and fruits the Common wasp (Vespula vulgaris) and the German wasp (Vespula germanica), the Red wasp (Vespula rufa), the Tree wasp (Dolichovespula sylvestris), the Norwegian wasp (Dolichovespula norwegica), and the Median wasp (Dolichovespula media) a species that arrived in Britain around 1980.

Whilst venturing up into the loft, I was surprised to see the small circular beginnings of a German wasp nest attached to the main beam overhead and neatly packaged in a little space on the right-hand side of the wood. Both the Common and the German wasp nests are created out of a sort of paper which is made by the wasps. German wasp nests differ from the Common wasp nests in their colour, as the German wasp nest is grey in appearance.

 

German wasp (Vespula germanica), nest

Granite grey

Today has begun with dark clouds hanging low, a persistent rain and a forecast of heavy winds – a sure sign that a drought was announced the other week! A fair portion of Britain is now under a hosepipe ban and so it is almost as though our ancient ancestors decided upon a rain dance, for the showers of April are becoming more and more heavy.

Kit cat

There is something wonderful how a cat has perfected the art of exercise. A stretch here and an arch there, an occasional stroll, an optimistic purr and the creation of a lean, athletic living machine paddles joyfully at the arrival of each new day.

The cat managed to stroll, stretch and nap .. all in between the April showers!

Will this be the year of the Ladybird?

Every so often a specific insect population takes the top spot. I’m not sure whether it has anything to do with certain weather conditions or whether insects just have cycles. Judging by the amount of early Ten-spot ladybirds there are around at the moment this could well be the year of the ladybird.

If we are to have wonderful plagues of this small brightly coloured insect, it couldn’t have come at a better time. The reason I am so excited at the prospect of having swirling masses of one of my most favourite of insects is that it has come at a time when we are being invaded by an Asian strain that has been given the old world name from around 1779 of ‘harlequin.’ Oh how innocuous harlequin sounds to the ear! Yet it is larger and more deadly than every other ladybird we have on our shores and apparently besides eating both the young and fully grown adult ladybirds of the British Isles, also nests inside buildings in large quantities and it bites!!

The British ladybird ten-spot is well noted for its variety in appearance, which if anything helps the harlequin ladybird to stay hidden as it slowly creeps Northwards ..

I have taken a few pictures of some of the wonderful colour displays and variations of the ten-spot which are currently flying about.

Ladybirds

The year marches on

March was a strange mixture of warm sunny days, dry,dry ground of drought and colourful tapestry detailing pin-points of new life. For the first time in recorded history, English bluebells have bloomed in March.  Frogs spawned early and tadpoles wiggled above their jelly cases.

English bluebells - Hyacinthoides non-scripta

Frogspawn

Very young tadpoles of Rana temporaria or the common frog, resting on top of egg (spawn) casings