evening light in spider's web

My eye was caught by the way the light glittered in this spider's web on the washing line in Crafty Green Boyfriend's Mother's garden. The photo doesn't really do it justice.....

Wester Craiglockart Hill

We were foraging for raspberries on Wester Craiglockart Hill today. Loads of fruit to pick and loads more left for anoy other berry pickers in town!

Lovely to see the Lady's Bedstraw in full bloom too

and this particularly beautiful patch of it growing through the gorse

We were also delighted to see this beautiful adult shield bug (Pentatoma rufipes Red-legged Shieldbug)

You can find out more about this species of shield bug and the various life-stages it goes through here. It's worth clicking on the link and scrolling down a wee bit just to see the eggs of this species!

As ever, red text in this post contains hyperlinks that take you to other webpages where you can find out more.

Orchid meadow

Up on a marshy area of Corstorphine Hill there's a small orchid meadow. This year there are more common spotted orchids there than I remember from previous years and they seem to be spreading out from the original area. I love the contrast of the orchid with the buttercups and the way the light shines in the grass.

and the long view down the hill

We were picking raspberries up Corstorphine Hill earlier today. It's worth the scratched arms to collect such delicious fruit! Lovely sunny day too with lots of butterflies (mostly meadow browns) flying around and grasshoppers calling from the grass.

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Meanwhile I've added another couple of photos to the nature photography download section of the Crafty Green Poet Etsy shop.

As ever, red text contains hyperlinks that take you to other webpages where you can find out more.

Basking in the sun

Wonderfully warm and sunny today. The clover and vetch meadow alongside the John Muir Walkway near Musselburgh is full of meadow brown butterflies and I spotted this lovely moth, which I'm pretty sure is a latticed heath.

At the Lagoons I was delighted to see a roe deer bring two fawns to the water to drink, you can see the mother and one fawn on the grass at left hand side of the photo, click on it for a larger view. ( I couldn't get closer or zoom closer, sorry!)

Lots of birds too both on the Lagoons and on the sea. I was so happy to see the young eider ducklings looking very relaxed

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I'm delighted to be appearing at Walk on the Wild Side, the July literary salon at Golden Hare Books. I'll blog about it more closer to the time, but in the meantime you can sign up to attend via the Facebook event page (and though the event is free you need to book a ticket via Eventbrite).

Tree Following

flowers becoming cones -
a bumble bee hovers 
in the shade

Giveaway Winner

About a month ago, I opened a giveaway for a copy of Bougainvillea Dancing, the pdf updated version of my first poetry pamphlet, which now includes added poems, short stories and photos, all inspired by my time in Malawi. (This year is Malawi's 50th year as an independent nation.)

I wrote the names of the entrants on pieces of paper and put them in a hat and asked Crafty Green Boyfriend to draw out a name.

And the winner is: Kat Mortensen who blogs at The Benevolent Vegan and at Poetikat Unbound.

Congratulations Kat! I'll send you the pdf of Bougainvillea Dancing tomorrow morning!

Bougainvillea Dancing is also available to buy in the Crafty Green Poet Etsy shop; on Lulu or direct from me if you email me. In all cases it is only available as a pdf.

I've no current plans to make it available in any other formats, but if you think I should make it available in other formats, please feel free to use the comments section below to state which would be your preferred format and why.

Landscape and Memory by Simon Schama

This is a huge, lavishly illustrated book that explores the human relationship with landscape and the natural world. It's divided into four sections: Wood; Water; Rock and Wood, Water, Rock. Each explores the theme through quite specific case histories: the story of the making of Mount Rushmore; the making of the first singposted woodland walk at Fountainbleu; royal hunting in the forests of Bialowieza.

It feels quite a daunting read, largely because of it's size. I read it section by section and broke off to read other things in between, which isn't something I usually do. But it's a strangely magical book, I was really drawn into the various worlds it reveals and it does give a wonderful range of insights into our relationship with the natural world and how that has developed and varies in countries including Lithuania, Germany, France, UK and USA.

And the illustrations are magnificent, including colour plates of paintings by artists including JMW Turner and John Cozens.

Landscape and Memory by Simon Schama, published by Harper Collins, 1995.

As ever, red text contains hyperlinks that take you to other webpages where you can find out more.