The Quiet Eye 2

Another meditative walk along the canal bank... I was walking so quietly and calmly that the sleepy heron didn't stir. I have noticed this year, more than usually, when the different plants appear. There was early blossom: blackthorn and cherry, then bluebells, wild garlic, hawthorn blossom. Now the hawthorn blossom has disappeared and we have the lacy white of elderflowers. They make lovely cordial and wine but the smell is so disgusting (cat pee!) that it puts me off picking it. It's pretty though.

Foxgloves are beginning to flower, and I love watching the fat bees crawling into the trumpets.

On the field edges there is red clover, with its attractively marked leaves:

and buttercups. The brown spiky things are, I think, some kind of plantain.

The bracken has grown high, quite suddenly, its curly tendrils unfurling.

I don't think I've ever really bothered to study grasses before but, even in a short stretch along the canal edge, there were lots of different kinds, all rather attractive when you look closely.

I found a discarded downy feather, perhaps from the swan that was gliding alongside me looking hopefully for some food. There had just been a gentle rain shower, leaving droplets of water on the barbs. The way the barbs interlock like zips has always fascinated me.

Cow parsley is in bloom. Some of its alternative names are prettier: lady lace, Queen Anne's lace, fairy lace.

and ox-eye daisies - a favourite of mine.

The spring-born lambs are growing fast and fattening up. There was just one black sheep in a field full of white - the product, I think of a recessive gene even though its parents may both have been white. The wool was (is?) considered less valuable as it can't be dyed, so 'black sheep' has become a derogatory term - someone who is a disappointment or a disgrace in a family. Personally, I thought this one was really cute.