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| Pyramidal orchid at
Stockton Cuttings on Thursday |
We have to be a bit
careful when letting Buddy out at the moment as we never know when our neighbours', Blair and
Liz, chickens are on the towpath. He is
very good and comes when called but I wouldn’t trust him on his own with them
(Buddy that is, not our current neighbour).
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| The cock with one of the
hens on Tuesday morning outside our boat |
We are having our house in
Kent re-tiled over the next few weeks; perfect timing for our tenants so it’s
done before the school holidays and definitely before winter. Mind you, the rain we’ve had over the last
few days has made it feel like it is winter.
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| Just started removing the
old Kent peg tiles from one roof |
We get at least one wasp
nest a year in the roof so knew the roofers would find the evidence. At least the wasps have all been exterminated
and hopefully having a new roof including felting etc. will mean fewer chances
of wasps in the future. It should
definitely mean no more damp patches inside
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| One of the wasp nests John’s
team has found so far |
Tuesday and Wednesday were
so wet that I had to wear wet weather gear when Buddy and I went for our
morning bike ride and our afternoon walk.
It did mean that very few boats were on the move but that also meant
that it was extremely busy on Thursday.
We cycled up to Stockton
Cuttings on Thursday morning and on the way bumped into Rob Pearson, a boater
friend on his boat Hekla. His wife, Lesley,
is an artist and they live on their boat visiting festivals around the country
as they operate it as a pop-up art gallery. They were moored just round the
corner but were heading off during the day.
When we got to the cuttings
the summer orchids were in full bloom – a Pyramidal orchid is at the top of the
page.
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| A forest of Common Spotted
orchids |
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| Close up of a Common
Spotted orchid |
There were plenty of
butterflies around too and I saw my first Marbled Whites of the year. Not easy to get a picture of them and the
photographs never do their dark cream colours any justice as they always look
dull white. Despite their name they are
actually members of the Brown family of which there are ten other species in
the UK. Three of them, the Scotch Argus,
the Large Heath and the Small Mountain Ringlet, can only be found in the Lake
District and Scotland and I have yet to see any of them (the Large Heath can
also be found in Wales). The other eight species are relatively common and I
tend to see all of them every year.
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| Marbled White |
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| Ringlet – another member
of the Brown family and very common and widespread at this time of year |
I also saw some Common
Blues – some were freshly emerged and a couple were really tatty that had
obviously been around a few weeks now.
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| Male Common Blue |
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| Tatty female Common Blue |
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