A day in the life...............June 23rd 2014

A nice gentle day with my IWC today. A walk around the garden first thing, followed by a Pilates session, a quick bit of shopping in Tavistock and then it was off to the Elephant's Nest pub at Horndon for a lunch in the sun. And, as we were so close to the moor, we had a walk! Hooray for the joys of being retired.

Our hostas are starting to come into flower. Another week or so and they'll all be out.

Ditto our Echeveria elegans, also known as Mexican snow ball and Mexican gem. Mmm, I wonder where it originates?

Any objective person would say that we don't really get a lot of early summer colour in our garden so it's always good to take pleasure when we have some.

Black elder or Sambucus nigra. I think this variety is called Black Lace. We bought it from the Duchy of Cornwall Nursery but I doubt if Prince Charles got his hands dirty raising it.

We were planning to walk from Willsworthy, a place well into the moor. But the red firing flags were up, meaning 'Do not walk within the marked posts as army firing practice is going on'. And it was because we could hear the crackle of small arms fire in the distance. The firing range has been here since early Victorian times and the army is still one of the biggest landowners on Dartmoor.

 

We did walk as far as we could, taking the route along the side of an old mine leat built around 1800. You can just about make out a red warning flag on top of Ger Tor in the background. Incidentally, transgression means getting shouted at by a burly man with a gun. I know as it happened to me once. Needless to say, I beat a hasty retreat. Self preservation is very high on my list of attainments.

As we couldn't walk where we had planned, we took another route nearby. Great clear skies again and some wonderful panoramas. This one is vaguely due north looking towards Widgery Tor, about 10 miles away as the bullet flies.

 

Strange things seen in the hedgerows Part XXV: a sealed plastic vial containing a slightly viscous pale yellow fluid. My guess is that it's an injection ampoule of some veterinary product. And, given all of the cow-related paraphernalia in the vicinity, I think it was destined for one of them.

A slightly out-of-focus pied wagtail methinks. So what's interesting about this not-uncommon bird? Not a lot but I'm still pleased with what my new 35-105 mm lens can do. Without it, the subject was just a twitching dot on a distant rock.

Dontcha just love foxgloves? As I said in an earlier blog, it's been a very good year for them.

I call this one 'Insect on blue flower'.

This one I call 'Two insects on one blue flower'.

A babbling brook - and that's enough babbling from me for one day.