Phwarr! Wouldn’t mind a bit of that.
Ah, newly wedded to my garden project I’ve been eyeing up this tasty bit of wasteland opposite the doctors. I feel ashamed, should I be lusting after other patches of ground already? It is full of the first flushes of wild flower diversity often found in newly cleared ground. To me it is absolutely beautiful. I don’t think I’ll be able to stop myself nipping in for a quick gander (if I get the chance!)
The other night I was supposed to be doing the clearing up while John put Izzy to bed. I popped over the road to post some letters, it was pouring it down.
On the way to the post box…..ooh a cool snail, I’m having that.
On the way back from the post box….ooh another cool snail, might as well have that one as well.
I appeared back in the kitchen and wondered what to do with my two new friends. When John came down no clearing up had been done and I had two snails in an old takeaway tub. One of them was a bit feisty. That was annoying on two counts:
Firstly, it kept trying to escape. ‘What don’t you like being in an old Jalfrezi tub with some floppy lettuce out of my fridge?!’
Secondly, it kept wriggling way out of it’s shell when I was trying to figure out whether it had got an umbilicus (a funny little hole some snails have at the back of their shells). ‘Get in your shell snail! Aren’t you supposed to be frightened of me?!’
That one I think was a juvenile Cepaea hortensis. Ah a teenager, that explains it!
The other one was much more compliant and was one of the exciting limestone specialists you get around here. It appeared to be Candidula intersecta.
I imagine that suddenly finding yourself in a strange place being prodded and having bright lights directed at you can be compared to an alien abduction.
Sorry I didn’t take photos of the real snails (got carried away and forgot about the blog). I hope Barry and Barbara will do.
Cheerio for now.
P.S. The FSC AIDGAP guide to ‘Land Snails in the British Isles’ is excellent.
I’m starting this blog on my second botany day. The weather is decent for once and I have the whole garden at my mercy.
It took me a while to get into it, fine days require clothes washing. I’m a bit strange, as you will eventually discover, I wont let John hang the washing out because I like doing it. He doesn’t seem to mind……
To add to the cocktail today my botanising is taking place to the sound track of the ‘World Toe Wrestling Championships’ being held at the pub on the corner.
As the title of this post suggests I’m rattling through the quick wins. That’s flowering plants and the lichens I can identify by sight. Getting stuck on a difficult moss or an uncooperative slug right from the off wouldn’t do much for my morale (especially when I can hear a distant John getting himself into a flap with the kids).
I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how easy the grasses have been. When you’ve got Francis Rose’ ‘Grasses, Sedges, Rushes and Ferns’ book, a dissecting microscope and the luxurious ‘labavan’ it’s much easier than battling with a steamed up hand lens on an exposed hillside.
A caravan with a microscope, surely that makes it a ‘labavan’.
One slight disadvantage I have is that my face smells vaguely of curry (free moisturiser from the local health food shop). So I can’t smell the sweet vernal grass (Anthoxanthum odoratum). It’s supposed to smell of coconut, perhaps it just turned my curry from Indian to Thai.
Anyway, I’m now up to 53 plants and lichens and a handful of opportunistically identified creepy crawlies. Here’s one of my favourites:
‘Jack in the Shed’
Check out the full list on the species list tab.
Bye for now.