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David

Yucca flowers, West Park

Yucca flowers, West Park

Yuccas are evolved for conditions a lot drier and hotter than this summer has been. But these plants, in West Park, still seem to have managed to flower as usual.

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David

Crowd of cinnabar moth caterpillars on ragwort

Crowd of cinnabar moth caterpillars on ragwort

It seemed like there were hundreds of yellow and black striped cinnabar moth caterpillars crawling over a patch of ragworts, their yellow stripes matching the yellow of the ragwort flowers. In reality, there were something over fifty, an impressive enough number.

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David

Cobwebs, heavy with dew

Cobwebs, heavy with dew

I don’t know if it is just me, but I was quite old before I realised that cobwebs weren’t actually the stereotypical webs of illustrated children’s books like Charlotte’s Web. Different sorts of spiders make webs of all kinds of shape. The “cob” of cobweb points to a 3D shape similar to the type og bread rolls called cobs in some parts of the country, to cobblestones, or to the knobs on the base of the beaks of male swans, cobs.

Cobwebs, heavy with dew

These two webs are small cobwebs on a low bush in West Park. I noticed them because they had caught a very heavy dew.

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David

Bellflower at the foot of Bridgnorth Castle

Bellflower at the foot of Bridgnorth Castle

Some sort of bellflower flowering inside the fenced off area around the remains of Bridgnorth Castle.

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David

Frog among pondweed

Frog among pondweed

A frog rests in a garden pond which has a surface sprinkled with pondweed. The frog was sheltering from me, and keeping cool on a day which was for once hot and sunny.

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David

Buddleia flower (end on view)

Buddleia flower (end on view)

The weather warmed up just at the right time for buddleias to flower in profusion this year. Sadly, there have been virtually no butterflies around to take advantage of this abundance on the butterfly bushes. The long term decline because of the various ways the environment is being degraded has been heightened by this year’s mainly cold and wet weather. The same for bees.

So I decided to picture a buddleia flower from a different angle (literally). So here’s an end-on view.