A few special things

It's grassland survey time of year again. The last couple of Saturday mornings, and with a few more to come, I have been at the Aberlady Nature Reserve with my fellow conservation volunteers, rummaging around in the undergrowth. We found sixteen different species in this 2m square site, and in the surrounding area a few other special treats.

The common spotted orchid

a big clump of hairy violet, which was quite a find,

and the Northern Marsh Orchid.

Ragged robin

and viper's bugloss are two of my favourite wild flowers, the latter also beloved by bees!

And here are two firsts for me. For a long time I have known that butterflies love to lay their eggs on stinging nettles, but I have never seen proof of that, until now! We passed dozens of these black caterpillars crawling around on nettles. They are the caterpillar of the peacock butterfly. What a transformation they are will be undergoing!!

Finally, this dainty little thing is a moth. The latticed heath moth, Chiasmia clathrata.

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In a vase on Monday - colour

The intense colours in my vase this week come from nasturtiums, sweetpeas and a single glorious zinnia! Their beauty and love of life speak for themselves and need no further words from me! Enjoy!

Coastal walk from Gullane to North Berwick

By the time I have walked about four miles, my toes are screaming at me - it's the arthritis, you see. One of the joys of being that little bit older than I was. However, for a long time, I have been keen to walk along the beaches, and follow the coastal path, between Gullane and North Berwick. So, having worked out the tide times, I decided today was the day, and off we went. Below is our starting point, the bay at Gullane. It's a lovely beach, very popular with dog walkers. This is looking east, the direction Tilly and I were going to take. Looking back, up the Forth, the unmistakable bulk of Arthur's Seat, and Edinburgh's skyline, just clear enough to see. For most of the walk, there is the choice between wandering along a series of beaches, or following a path along the top of each. There's no denying it, at heart I am a shell-seeker. I have loads of shells at home. We lived on one of the out islands in the Bahamas for a just over a year, ...

Possibly the last post and a sizzlingly hot vase on Monday

The border in our tiny garden is in an in-between phase at the moment and not very colourful, but elsewhere there are pops of high summer colour and I have brought them together in my vase today. The running wave uses Blogger as it's vehicle and they are changing the way a post is created but unfortunately I cannot make the new format work. I can't progress beyond the title! I cannot navigate to the main body of the post to create text. The new template has no prompts for adding photos, weblinks, to format the text, change font etc. It may be my old MacBook that's as fault but I can't do anything about that!! Are any other IAVOM bloggers who use Blogger having the same problems? I have tried, three times, to contact Blogger through their 'Help' prompt and received no feedback or contact whatsoever. This post is using the old 'Legacy' format, which no longer permits any kind of formatting of text, and so after four attempts I have finally manage...

the running wave

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