I was doing another quick litter pick along the river yesterday and found this stone. I think it's a Lepidodenron stigmaria fossil. They were the tree-sized plants that grew in the tropical forests 300 million years ago that eventually became the coal that made this area wealthy for a very short time. The holes are the pattern of hairs that came out of the roots of the plant. This probably came out as spoil from one of the coal pits and has been bumping around the river for 100 years since then.
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
I've had a couple of Lodgepole Pine cones in my cone collection for 10 years or so now, so long that I've forgotten where I found them. My oldest boy picked up the cone collecting obsession though and I gave him one of them to add to the massive stack of cones that he's brought home from various places. Anyway the thing with Lodgepole cones is that they're glued together with resin and won't open unless the temperature exceeds 50°C. The idea being that when a forest fire sweeps through it clears the undergrowth and the heat melts the resin, the cones open and the seeds get a nice clear bed of fertile soil to germinate in. I'm not sure where he was keeping his cone but in the last heatwave it got hot enough to open up. Maybe it was in a black bucket or in a container in the sun. The seeds look good too so we've planted them to see if we can grow new trees.
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
I had to go to the shop earlier and when I got out of the car I saw this coin on the floor. It's a Gibraltar 1p and the bird is a Barbary Partridge. It's also worth several times face value
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
I know not everyone is a fan of skulls and bones but I thought this was interesting. A House Sparrow skull next to just the beak from a gannet. Gannets are one of those birds that are always seen at a distance and are hard to put into scale.
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
A pinecone update from the post above. Four out of nine seeds germinated, one rotted at the stem due to the terrible soil but two are looking very strong so far. It's amazing to think that those seeds are over a decade old. I wish I had some sterile potting soil now.
I also found a perfect blackbird nest in the Mahonia while I was pruning them back. Sadly one egg didn't hatch but there's been plenty of babies around this year so hopefully it was just a dud. It's amazing how carefully woven it all is with mud neatly applied around the lip to keep it all neat.
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
Posts
I've got a couple of those in a bowl on a console table ... might put them in the sun in the greenhouse to see if they open.
Bee x
A single bee creates just one twelfth of a teaspoon of honey in her lifetime