Caterpillars, Oaks and Eggars

Here are some photos of very large caterpillars that we saw on the solstice.  I identified these as Oak Eggar moth caterpillars.

And with a knife (legal blade size) for scale:

Luckily we saw and photographed an Oak Eggar moth last year in much the same area.  So here is a moth I prepared earlier:

Solstice, Poets and Sunsets

Here are some more of the solstice photos:

Where is this incredible place?  In Derbyshire!

 

 

 

A poet on a rock:

 

You can see how magical the evening was:

And the sun setting:

 

 

Solstice and Swallows

Here are some photos of swallows building a nest on the house opposite the garden at Aimo's House:

 

 

 

And here's the first few from the solstice:

The incredibly exotic looking location is Ramshaw Rocks on the Derbyshire/Staffordshire border.

Swallows and Brambles

These are some pages from my nature journal:

Quite a lot of nature going around the garden at Aimo's House at the moment.  Some swallows are making a nest on the house back-to-back with us, so we can watch progress.  If they had built on our house, we wouldn't see it as well, so it's a win for us.

Bracken, Bluebells and No Nastiness

I was just leafing through Cecily Parsley's Nursery Rhymes the other day,

Like you do

when I saw this picture:

A Bunny Pub

and was pleased to notice on the right, that Beatrix Potter had put bluebells and newly-unfurling bracken together, just as I did it my sketchbook.  I felt sort of warm, and fully justified, like I'm doing my field journal right.

I got another warm feeling when I read this brilliant biography of Beatrix Potter recently:

A Very Good Book

as it explained the whole it-was-a-patriarchal-conspiracy-to-diss-Potter's-mycological-fieldwork-discoveries in a way that made it all seem less nasty than you thought.

Less nasty than you thought, always a good thing to discover.

An Interesting item

This week's (or last week's if you consider how long it has taken me to post this) Buxton Advertiser had a very interesting item.  No, not "Threw bottle at window of ex's grandparents" but "Town Team puts Buxton on the map".

An Interesting Item

Mister Hope and Zoe Badger don't get a mention in the paper, but it was they who slaved for months to get this project done.  It was an incredibly time-consuming process, as they did all the research themselves, and co-ordinated the other artists, making the different elements fit together, as well as doing large amounts of the artwork.

You can see my small contribution around the Timeline.

Well done Thomas and Zoe!

Buzzards, Bluebells and Bracken

I've been to Forest School.  Me and Mel took the kids (well just her kid actually but it sounds a bit weird for me to go and not drop off any kids) and then did some sketching ourselves.  On a sunny bank, covered with bluebells and overlooking the Cheshire countryside and a lake.  And we saw buzzards.  It was all a bit idyllic, after we managed to meet up.  The bus dropped me in the middle of nowhere and it took a bit of work for Mel to find me.

Anyway, I'd like to show you my journal pages, but the scanner isn't co-operating.  Here's one double page, with the buzzards on; and the only bit it would scan of the bluebells page.  It's probably the best bit after all.

Buzzards and Bracken

 

A bit of Bluebells