Phone call from House Teenager- "I left my maths homework at home....". I wandered over to Redland Green, picking my way past the sixth formers who lounged on the pavements outside the school, smoking cigarettes in that anxious way they do when the main object is to look mean and moody pour épater la bourgeoisie.
Dropping off the missing homework at the reception desk, I detoured in search of spring flowers on the Green, and saw someone hunched over with a camera. It was Julie, of the Redland Green Conservation Group, and just in front of her lens was one of the local snake's head fritillaries. So I joined her, and she told me that there were far fewer than last year, perhaps as a result of the council digging things up around the place. Certainly there was lots of recently-disturbed earth close by.
Home again, a blackcap was burbling away from the garden opposite. A raven circled high overhead, cronking out over all of Westbury Park.
and if you did the digging instead of the council.....
ReplyDeletelovely flowers
You have teenagers well sussed. I am not sure why some folk look back to their days with nostalgia. I hated that uncertainty and self-concious awareness of trying to look as if I didn't care when I so obviously did; smoking dodgy cigarettes and drinking cheap cider with black currant. Oops, I am on a nostalgia trip myself. (I wouldn't mind being skinny with little or no effort again though).
ReplyDeleteI'd forgotton about the cider with blackcurrent, nowadays I'd call it a "kir Breton".
ReplyDeleteI've never seen anything like that before, it really looks like it has little squares - it's not April the first yet, is it? - Just looked them up, I have seen white ones.
My favourite flowers ... :-)
ReplyDelete