Mediterranean blue skies at Wapping today on the Thames Foreshore at low tide. Boats & barges have been moored here for centuries, close your eyes and you can hear the shouts & curses of dockers as goods were unloaded from lighters and winched up into wharves above. Literally a portal to the past.

A few weeks after Dearly Beloved removed the ivy from an old California Lilac and ruthlessly cut out the dead wood it is now sprouting new shoots from dormant buds in the bark so there is no need to believe anything an expert tells you about Ceanothus or ivy

We are finally getting some much needed rain today so #gardening is on hold but here are some beautiful Siberian Irises that just opened to tide us over.

#bloomscrolling #iris 🌱

Judging by the vigour of new shoots emerging from a stub of pruned Ceanothus I would say the typical pruning advice is over-cautious - but it is close to a south-facing wall

Morning Bluebs.
Tuesday..
Please enjoy this Geranium Kashmir White. 🌱

Apparently the woodpigeons live on stripped plum blossoms and plums from my personal plum tree and also the tenderest of pea shoots. They can drink without tilting their heads up but THEN THEY TURN AROUND AND SHIT INTO WHATEVER THEY JUST DRANK FROM. Who does that?

Oh God. Not Open-Farm Bloody-Sunday #TheArchers

Loud drumming up a tall conker this morning.

My Fat Balls would stop that

Anne Bodenham, a woman in her eighties, was hanged on Fisherton Street in 1653 because she was known as a 'cunning woman' of Salisbury and had promised to stop the flooding of the city centre by re-engineering the Central Car Park which she did at Great Public Expense but the flooding became worse

Birdfair - a reputational risk

#climatechange #globalbirdfair #lowcarbonbirding

lowcarbonbirding.net/2025/02/05/b...

Views of Danebury hillfort’s ramparts and interior on a warmer & brighter day back in 2023 #HillfortsWednesday

As it's #HillfortsWednesday, here are a few from a recent site visit that involved a trip up Old Sarum, #Wiltshire.

It's always a delight to see my favourite monoecious plant (Hazel, Corylus avellana) coming into flower. Here are the male and female flowers side by side. A sure sign spring is on its way! #wildflowerhour @bsbibotany.bsky.social

“The cat on the path is looking at the blue-tits, as cats do at birds they cannot reach”

Artist: CF Tunnicliffe
Writer: EL GrantWatson

My father issued himself a driving licence while he was in the Royal Engineers. He added in permission to drive “a track laying vehicle steered through its tracks” so he could have a go on the battalion bulldozer. That extra qualification stayed on his licence for fifty years.

The latest instalment of the Walshaw Moor turbines story - a sorry tale of potentially large-scale habitat destruction & C loss markavery.info/2025/01/02/g...

#windfarm #carbon #miliband #peat #deeppeat #curlew #lapwing #plover #grouse #yorkshire #haworth #bronte #calderdale #walshaw #moorland #£££

Another one from the other morning on a flooded Somerset Levels, with Glastonbury Tor framed by willow trees