Along the River Tyne at Haddington

Yesterday we had a lovely walk along the River Tyne at Haddington, a town in East Lothian, a short bus journey away from Edinburgh (This is a different River Tyne to the one that flows through Newcastle upon Tyne.)

We spent quite a lot of time looking at the pictorial wildflower meadow that stretches from the bridge in the photo above quite a distance along the river. There were a reasonable number of Eristalis hoverflies enjoying the flowers 

and a few Banded hoverflies (Syrphus sp) which have been very elusive so far this year

The meadow includes a nice variety of flowers including red poppies

and Wild Carrot, my favourite of the umbellifers, especially at this time of year, when it's in seed

Three Days of Scottish Summer

 We've had a really poor summer as far as weather has been concerned. However, we were lucky enough to get three days of glorious sunny weather early last week which coincided with our brief trip to Peebles in the Scottish Borders. 

You can read a wee bit more about our trip in my latest Substack post.

Corstorphine Hill again!

 Yesterday, we walked around Corstorphine Hill again! It's one of our favourite places to walk. Also, I had, earlier in the week carried out a butterfly survey there, when the weather was only just good enough to do such a survey. Yesterday, we started our walk thinking that the weather might be better. So we started in the Walled Garden, where the butterfly transect route starts

 We saw a few hoverflies in the garden, including this Bog Hoverfly (Sericomyia silentis):

We didn't see any butterflies at all and soon realised that the weather wasn't going to be good enough for a survey, so we didn't keep to the survey route and just walked where we wanted to around the hill.

At another part of the hill, we were impressed to see this web of a Funnel Web Spider

Viewing a Landscape through Cataracts

Nothing is clear, all is blurred green
with blotched lights strung out like beads
while every dew-drop glows
at the centre of its own rainbow.
We seem to be in the middle of fields
and there looks to be woodland over there.
I wish I could see the birds that are singing.

Surgery will soon fix my eyes:
these blurred colours will resolve
back into shapes and meaningful things
but nothing is clear for this land -
any time in the future, all this greenery
could be erased just by the whim
of a bureaucrat's pen.

(inspired by Green Terrain by Kelly Austin-Rolo, and originally published on Ekphrastic Review. 

**

Since writing this poem, I've had cataract surgery on my left eye (my right eye was done seven years ago) and my eyesight is much improved. 

Sadly, despite the change in government in the UK, the future for the UK's green spaces is no more secure than it was with the previous government.

Mathematics of Life by Ian Stewart

 

Subtitled Unlocking the Secrets of Existence, this book is a readable tour through the maths of biology and ecology. The book is very accessible for those who don't enjoy too much maths and covers topics such as the Fibonacci series, the maths of genetics, game theory, networking and patterns. 

I've got a Botany degree, and so a lot of this felt like revision, but very engaging and sometimes entertaining revision with a new focus on maths. As a student, I had been aware of the importance of statistics in populations studies in ecology and also the importance of mechanics in environmental physics (my least favourite subject, far too much physics!). Reading this book, though, really opened my eyes to the hidden maths, particularly that which determines the pattern and form of living things.

This is an excellent book if you want an overview of the hidden importance of maths to biology, but if you want some serious mathematical investigation, you may need to look elsewhere! 

Mathematics of Life by Ian Stewart, published (2012) by Profile Books.

It's definitely autumn today!

 We had a lovely walk round Corstorphine Hill today. It was quite misty, with a traditional Edinburgh haar (sea mist), which lent a very autumnal feel to the woodland

The gorse buses were draped in spiders' webs, and everything was glittering with drops of water from recent rain. Spiders' webs can be very tricky to capture in photos, but I didn't do too badly today. I got decent photos of both the orb webs 

 

and the blanket type webs, which are made by different species of spiders.

We looked closely at oak trees to find acorns and were happy to find a few full size acorns:

Some of the acorns on one of the Pendunculate Oaks have been taken over by Knopper Gall Wasps, Andricus quercuscalicis, which have created these distinctive galls - this is a young gall

 this darker growth is an older gall

and only part of the acorn below has become a gall

Customising Clothes

It's Second Hand September, which is a call to “shop second hand to take a stance against fast fashion and dress for a fairer world.” (You can read my Substack post on the topic here). However, as well as buying second hand clothes, there are other ways to dress more ethically, such as repairing or customising worn out clothing.

I've been looking at this jacket recently

and thinking that, although it's still a lovely jacket, it's become a little bit shabby. So I've been collecting lace and ribbons to add to it. I now have the design ready and if all goes well, I'll share the result here once I've finished! 

In the meantime, to get myself into the right frame of mind, I added this ribbon to the cuffs of a long sleeved t-shirt:

It's actually been a while since I customised clothing (as opposed to repairing). Here are some of my previous projects: 

I added lace to the cuffs of these gloves:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I added beads to the neckline of this dress: 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I removed the worn out cuffs of this blouse and replaced them with satin cuffs that I repurposed from an old robe that had fallen apart:

Autumn Approaches in the Dells

 I walked along the Water of Leith, through Colinton and Craiglockart Dells today. It was a beautiful day, bright sunshine with a slight autumnal chill to the air. A lovely day to record wildlife and pick litter!

The pictorial flower meadow in Spylaw Park is still bright and blooming 

I was happy to see several Speckled Wood butterflies flying amongst the trees. I was less happy to find this dead Common Shrew, it had no obvious signs of injury, so I don't know how it had died. I very rarely see this little mammals when they're alive. 

Butterfly haiku

a sunbeam

through the woodland canopy -

dancing butterflies 

*

previously published in Golden Haiku 2024 and displayed in Washington DC

Summer Sunshine at last!

 Yesterday felt like the first real summer's day of the year, warm and sunny all day! And now it's September so that's probably the only summer we'll get this year. 

We had a lovely walk, starting off at Arthur's Seat 

 enjoying the views over Duddingston Loch

and the flowers, including this clump of Viper's Bugloss, which is still in bloom.

We popped into the designated wildlife area next to the loch, where several hoverflies were enjoying the sunshine, including this Footballer Hoverfly (Helophilus pendulus) 

and ended up at Dr Neil's Garden, overlooking Duddingston Loch

which has recently installed this insect hotel.

We also visited the community garden Jock Tamson's Gairden

**

I'm delighted to have a haiku in the bee themed issue of Haiku Girl Summer!