Lmst

24/05/2025 - A sunny visit to Brechin Walled Garden and Tearoom today. What an oasis of calm this place is. The flowers are nice, the trees are wonderful. The cedar of lebanon in the middle has to be seen! Maples and dawn redwoods looked just lovely in the sunshine. A place to sit and daydream.

#DayOut #Trees #WildFlowers

I love car parks for wild flowers. We had a good start before even getting in the walled garden. Photo of a pink flower of Cut-leaved Crane's-bill. Car park also had plenty vetch, speedwell and a Thyme-leaved Sandwort which I don't think I've seen before. Rough ground is ace for wild flowers.

View down one of the paths in Brechin walled garden. A few rhododendron still in flower and lots of colourful flowers I didn't know but were very nice to see and smell. Big trees beyond. The tall one is a giant sequoia.

One of us walking under and past the branches of a mighty cedar of lebanon. What a tree!

One of us walking down a tree and flower lined path. Getting a little lost in the sunshine and shade. A place not to rush.

23/05/2025 - Evening walk after work. Start of the weekend. It's always nice to look for the little things on the way round. Young gooseberries starting to grow next to a lamp post on rough ground next to a busy road. There's nice things to see everywhere when I take life slow. Have a nice weekend everyone 😃

#EveningWalk

Young gooseberries starting to grow next to a lamp post on rough ground next to a busy road

Spaceways boosted:

Spotted this dried-up riverbed during a walk today. It's pretty bad when even Scotland is experiencing drought-like conditions (the driest Spring for ~150 years apparently).

All change tonight, thankfully... 🌧️

#climatechange #drought #scotland #rivers

A stony, rocky riverbed with barely a trickle of water flowing.

Spaceways boosted:

https://sharonsmeanderings.wordpress.com/2025/05/22/the-doe-continued/

#naturewriting

@Hellybootwader I think I say this every year round this time but it does seem a very good year for gorse. Dornoch and north from there is so good for it. I love the hillside above Helmsdale when it's covered in flowering gorse, just a wall of yellow.

Spaceways boosted:

Extra bonus gorse for May as there was just so much of it - not on my home patch either but up near Dornoch.
Yes, it did smell of coconut.
There was more than I could fit in the photo- nearly 360 degree gorse
(Shout out to @Spaceways for the # )
#YearOfGorse #Whin

A view out over a gorse bush in flower. Behind it are more gorse bushes and to the side more again.
The flowers are vivid yellow and seem to cover most of the bush. The sky is blue with white fluffy clouds. There is a patch of scrubby grass at the bottom of the near bushes

Just said to Mrs Spaceways I was away to put the ice cream on. I should have said washing machine but luckily they knew what I meant. I'm tired this evening.

Spaceways boosted:

I think this incredibly tiny bee which I spotted in an apiary today may be Andrena Semilaevis which are associated with speedwell. It is so tiny.

A very small bee is working bright blue speedwell flowers

Spaceways boosted:

Sun Ra came from Saturn. Interplanetary earth arrival date May 22 1914. Place : The Magic City, Birmingham, Alabama. US

22/05/2025 - A chat with the bees before heading home after work today.

I'm not very good with bee ID but I saw 6 different types I think. These were my two favourites, tree bumblebee and early bumblebee. Proper made me smile, they are just lovely.

#Bees

Spaceways boosted:

Never
found my people.
Never heard my own words
from the mouths of anyone else.
Never.

#poetry #cinquain

@karochan3 Your family come from a very nice part of this land. A fine place to spend a few days. I was a bit fed up leaving this morning to head home as the weather is still so nice, I could have stay more longer.

21/05/2025 - After a few days away it was time to head home. We stopped on the way back to have a look round Burgie Arboretum near Forres. The trees, flowers and bugs were so nice we stayed the whole day. A magic place.

View of Burgie Arboretum. Trees and flowers surrounding a small loch. It's a young arboretum so the trees aren't massive but it's wonderful. A very good place for dragonflies and damselflies.

Spaceways boosted:

Flowers have been blooming on Earth for 123 million years, pollen grains reveal

According to existing research, the very first land plants emerged in the Ordovician geological period, roughly 485 to 444 million years ago. At first there were mosses, then ferns, ginkgos and conifers. Flowering plants—now the most diverse group of land plants—did not appear until more than 300 million years later.

Researchers have now identified the oldest pollen produced by eudicot flowering plants in sedimentary successions from Portugal. Together with their team, Prof. Dr. Ulrich Heimhofer of the LUH Institute of Earth System Sciences and Dr. Julia Gravendyck of the Bonn Institute of Organismic Biology at the University of Bonn identified fossilized angiosperm pollen from coastal marine sediments deposited within the Lusitanian Basin in Portugal. They dated these deposits to approximately 123 million years ago.

How the flowering plants developed, and from which plants, remains unclear. What is considered fact, however, is that angiosperms had a lasting impact on the development of life on our planet. They significantly enriched the diversity of species on Earth.

https://phys.org/news/2025-05-blooming-earth-million-years-pollen.html

Spaceways boosted:

Bear Grass, captured by my sister, a favorite

#bloomscrolling

three white cone-shaped bear grass blossoms against a dark background

@SharonMcC That really is a lovely photo of an interesting plant.

20/05/2025 - Another sunny day out looking for big trees and little flowers and bugs. We spent the day at the River Findhorn, south of Forres in Moray.

#DayOut #Trees #WildFlowers

Photo is of two big trees by the River Findhorn. The taller one on the right is the tallest measured Sitka Spruce in Britain at just over 65m (also making it one of the tallest of any tree in Britain). On the left is a Douglas Fir at only just 60m tall!

We spent most of the day at Logie Steading. Looking for bugs in their lovely gardens and wild flowers in the woods. Pick of the bugs today was a huge Narrow-bordered Bee Hawk-moth, top bug!. Photo is looking over the lawn to impressive Logie House and trees beyond.

Near the big trees the River Findhorn flows through narrow rocks. The place is called Randolph's Leap. The water looks low from the lack of rain in recent weeks.

Not the best of photos but I think this was a new wild flower for me today. It's a wood speedwell. Small pinkish flower with stalked green leaves.

19/05/2025 - 8 hrs spent doing this today. 12 miles of doing not much of nothing, just walking, looking for wild flowers and chatting rubbish to each other.

#DayOut