Thursday 26 February 2009

Beginnings

Ox-eye daisies flowering in God's acre down in the village . . .


This blog has been born of my desire to share my love of the countryside with anyone who is interested. I was fortunate enough to have been born at a time when parents had a knowledge of country things - my parents had both been born in the country but moved to the town. I grew up being able to ask what that bird or this flower was and being told the name and often the country nickname too - I have always called Wagtails 'pollydishwashers' for instance.

I grew up on the outskirts of Southampton, one half of our "garden" was wild, with Damson trees where the Nightingales sang on hot summer nights and a glorious tangle of gorse and broom where we made camps in the summer. Yarrow and Bladder Campion grew at the lawn-edge, and we had a dry stony soil in banks around a triangle of land where my dad grew strawberries. Here lived the lizards and slow-worms. Kids used to come from miles around to try and catch them! I grew up learning how to recognize and handle reptiles. How they would first wee on you in an attempt to get you to let go of them, and if that didn't work, they would drop their tail. I cringe now at the memory of both a common lizard, with its beautiful skin pattern in browns and beiges, and one of the ubiquitous slow-worms, who varied from deep chocolate brown to almost silvery, dropping their tails whilst being held captive by my curiosity.




When I was about six, a neighbour's daughter who was a couple of years older was doing a project for school where you had to identify wild flowers and press them into a scrap book, and thus began my life-long interest in botany. I'm not an expert - I know more than many people, not as much as others, but I continually try and extend my knowledge. I can still recall where I first saw such-and-such - the highlight of my (botanical) life being the first time I saw Viper's Bugloss growing in Dorset (near the village of Kingston in the Purbecks). It was one of the coloured illustrations in my Observer's Book of Wild Flowers which I got when I was 6 or 7 and with its pink and blue flowers it looked so exotic.


I enjoy watching birds and identifying them here in our Welsh garden. We have nothing exotic, but I love to see the Nuthatches and 'Woody Woodpecker' arrive, and I will shortly do a post of our visitors to the nut nets and try and get some photos. Where my camera has not captured something I write about, I shall rely on that marvellous resource Creative Commons Search.

In sharing what little knowledge I have, I should love this to become a resource for parents and children alike, as well as those of you who have an innate interest in the countryside but are living in town, or even in another country. This, I hope, will go some way to replacing the Nature Table we always had in my Junior school and which is now just a dim and distant memory in the education of children.

14 comments:

  1. This is already in my favourites and I'm really looking forward to reading your posts. It is such a good idea to have an approachable, straightforward source of knowledge about nature and I hope lots of people find and use this - especially those who need it most.

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  2. jennie this is really looking good :o) and look forward to reading your future posts :o)

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  3. I am delighted that I had the 'lightbulb moment' in the wee hours of darkness again. Already I have several things to write up . . . Where's that camera?!

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  4. This is a fabulous idea! Goodluck with it, mind you if the first post is anything to go by you wont need any luck!


    hen
    xxx

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  5. I wonder if you'd like these to add to your site:

    http://www.botanicalkeys.co.uk/flora/

    http://www.nhm.ac.uk/nature-online/life/plants-fungi/postcode-plants/

    http://handbooks.btcv.org.uk/handbooks/index

    http://www.devonwildlifetrust.org/index.php?section=services:biodiversitycentre

    The Devon one is specific but pergaps the other wildlife trusts around the country do the same. It's been an amazing resource for me to find out about our land in Devon.

    hen
    xxx

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  6. Thanks hen, will note those down (Devon one just up my street, because of my Devon roots!)

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  7. Viper's bugloss: This plant grew in all the semi-wild areas around my childhood home. The little flowers were so appealing, but I well recall that the hairs on the stems were irritatingly prickly when I tried to add them to a bouquet.
    I am amazed at your creative energy--interesting and informative blogs, the big gardens, needlework--life is so full of wonderful realms to explore!

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  8. Glad you like it. I never realized it grew abroad too, but that photo from Creative Commons shows it growing in New Zealand. I wonder if it went over with the settlers?

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  9. Beautiful new blog Jennie :)

    Kim x

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  10. This reminds me of my days (many moons ago!) in the Brownies. We used to go on 'naure rambles' as part of our weekly sessions and we used to collect samples of wild flowers and grasses to bring back and press, so that we could make a little scrap-book. Simple pleasures, but we learned so much. I won a copy of the Observers book of Grasses, Sedges & Rushes in 1973, for having the best kept scrapbook during the annual Brownie Concert!!

    Willow x

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  11. I gave a lovely nature ramble talk to the Brownies when my girls were members. It was autumn and I was showing them all sorts of fungi, and how to identify trees. I think it is essential that such knowledge is passed on to each generation, wherever they live. Oh and well done on your Observer's book Willow - that's one I never had . . .

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  12. what a wonderful blog! i grew up here in the new forest so not far from where you did in southampton~i too grew up knowing the name pollydishwashers from my granddad.

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  13. I think this is such a good idea!

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  14. Solstice dreamer - glad to hear you're enjoying it. When we moved here from Dorset, it was Dorset I was home-sick for. Now we've been here over 20 years and it's the Forest I miss.

    Jane - enjoy.

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