Mr or Mrs hedgehog you need to be under those leaves by now and like many creatures hibernating against the dark and cold unless your a lichen………………………
or a bracket fungus
Some lichen are very vibrant in the particular light of early winter and I think these berries nicely set off the green and yellow of these lichen
Kingston Upon Hull is shortformed to Hull. Like Paris the word is short and stubby. From that point on though I suspect people associate Paris in a different way to Hull.
I recently visited Hull, yet only for the second time in four years.
The first visit was in 2017 – Hull was celebrating its city of culture status. Remember them – great big social events with programmes of music, film, theatre and the arts.
Well my lead image is from early 2017.
The Narwhal who owned this tusk lived millions of years ago and was the largest sea mammal in the oceans of its day
Some bright spark thought it would be a good idea to stick a turbine blade in the main square: I thought it was a Narwhal tusk created by Damien Hirst. I guess if it had been then
It would still be there
Hull would now have some serious arts bragging rights in the sculptural world
I might not have got in to the art gallery so easily
Talking of art galleries, the Ferens Art Gallery in Hull or should we make it KUH even KuH or maybe HKu – more interesting – like NY which I think never harmed New York given its worn on so many clothes. Except KuH is cow in german and KH is some game in Japan and HKu denotes Hong Kong University according to the dreaded search engines.
Oh well………
The Ferens Art Gallery is one of those regional city galleries which deserve greater footfall simply because they are less imposing and possibly less intimidating than the big galleries in the very big cities.
In approximately 7 currently open rooms you can steer your way through the history of art in under 100 pictures (I was not counting as such so please go check – you get the drift).
In about one hour – just viewing only those pictures that “really attract” your eye you can be in and out.
Given it is free entry you can always come back again to take a closer look.
So go visit Hull, visit the Art Gallery and get a coffee in the gallery or in one of the nearby cafes. The people on the entrance were really friendly and welcoming, trying to make everyone feel relaxed. Yes we created a brief queue!
ok so it is the product of humans – even so it looks very surreal and could pass for a Damien Hirst GIANT Narwhal tusk at a squint – I think!
In my next post on Hull, I will reflect on something else that caught my eye on my second visit.
The humble butterfly bush…….some days there is nothing to see, but then the flowers are overrun
nothing and then the sun comes out the wind drops and the humidity is just right
The humble yet very large weed called buddleia has a redeeming feature. Butterflies love it’s nectar rich flower heads.
The flower heads are actually dozens of flowers each with a nectar store.
This means the butterflies can camp on a single plant and get a lot of nectar for less effort.
The beautiful almost luminous blue scallop edge markings make this butterfly a welcome visitorMany buddleia are purple or white and with very large conical flowerheads whereas our bush has smaller globes of yellow.
With a cooler Autumn fast approaching this is probably the last of my butterfly blogs for 2020. I will miss them and this year has been only good at times. I look forward to 2021 and perhaps a golden year for butterflies.
As summer progresses it is this time of year that our friends the spiders begin to appear in numbers. I am not completely at home with them yet they are fascinating.
It all started when one parachuted down from the ceiling into my line of sight!
We have quite a few of these in our house every Autumn and somehow they got called Trevor. I really cannot remember why!
Anyway Trevor did some dancing on his threadTrevor looks quite cute really Then there are the “harvesters” who are very gangly and frail looking.And over lunch our small black and white jumping spiders put in an appearanceThey seemed to like our plates matching their colour scheme
And then there are the hunters
Having met the jumping spiders at lunch I was on the lookout for other spiders and this stunning hunter was wizzing through the grass. Fortunately it stopped to pose for me – I think you can see two sets of eye clusters on the near side
Finally as the nights draw in and cool down our house will become home to some monster chaps who we have measured to about 40mm or 1.5 inches across leg span.
Remember spiders are good home keepers tidying your home of too many insects and other crawlies.
In July the Buddleia start to really blossom and it is no coincidence it is known as the butterfly bush. The butterflies flock to its nectar rich flowers which are so prolific. It happily grows in very thin soil so it is often seen as an invasive albeit pretty weed that grows into small bushy trees though! Of course weeds are a rich source of nutrients for our butterflies.
two small tortoiseshells enjoying some late evening sunSome butterflies like this red admiral get more attention because of their colour. This little orange/brown butterfly proved very elusive and just would not settle even for a close up! so this is a long shot….It is called the gatekeeper because it inhabits hedgerows and is seen by humans by the field gate! A proper flutterby!This white butterfly was more accommodating – a nice example of the “small white”
Relax to hundreds of Daphnia Magna? as they dance around or “flea jump” under water. Oh and a baby frog or old tadpole hides badly while some tadpoles come from the deep to breathe
It has been a while since I wrote on this blog and in that time the world has literally turned upside down. Back then, actually only February, the Chinese were wrestling with their outbreak while in Italy the first signs of a serious European outbreak were just appearing. Since then it has begun to spread everywhere and most of Europe is locking down to try to avoid following Italy into significant loss of life.
Society is in collective shock and it appears relying heavily on the world wide web to help the isolation and separation that we must now all encounter.
So I hope this will be the last time I write about COVID-19 and that this blog will focus instead on the distraction of the simple hobby of table-top wargaming.
The Wargaming Erratic 