Amelia's photos

This was taken at the limit of the zoom on my camera. I was surprised to catch sight of this hare, and delighted that I got a recognizable, but a tad blurred, photo.

Equisetum arvense, the field horsetail or common horsetail, is an herbaceous perennial plant in the Equisetopsida (the horsetails), native throughout the arctic and temperate regions of the northern hemisphere. It has separate sterile non-reproductive and fertile spore-bearing stems growing from a perennial underground rhizomatous stem system. The fertile stems are produced in early spring and are non-photosynthetic, while the green sterile stems start to grow after the fertile stems have wilted and persist through the summer until the first autumn frosts. The erect sterile stems are 10–90 cm tall jointed segments around 2–5 cm long. As a child i used to love pulling the segments apart and marvelled how they fitted together again. Equisetum is a "living fossil", the only living genus of the entire subclass Equisetidae, which for over 100 million years was much more diverse and dominated the understory of late Paleozoic forests. Courtesy of: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equisetum It is very troublesome in a garden, so don't even think of putting a container of it into your garden pond!

Today's Saturday Challenge is: 'Artwork'. What do you have hanging on your walls or displayed around your house? These are just some mementos of Adrian's travels before he retired. My favourite is the bird. It comes from Indonesia and is carved in one piece of wood. The signature underneath just says 'Tom'. The head is obviously from Mexico, and the snake is a stamp which signifies the Chinese year of Adrian's birth. Underneath it has his surname carved both in English and Chinese. The PiP shows the hand-prints of two of our grandchildren, Emily and Florence. It was done when they were about four and two years old. Milly has just finished at University trained as a dentist, and Flo is in her second year studying environmental art and design. This plate is one of my most treasured possessions.

Where baby oaks play in the breeze Among wood-sorrel and fringed fern, Through the green garments of the trees The quivering shafts of sunlight burn. Edith Nesbit.

HFF to you all from Shropshire.

Loveliest of trees> Loveliest of trees, the cherry now Is hung with bloom along the bough, And stands about the woodland ride Wearing white for Eastertide. From A. E. Housman's book 'The Shropshire Lad'

The five petals are each deeply notched as to appear as ten petals. Flowers appear from April until June. When the seed cases ripen the seeds can be heard ‘popping’ as they are released, unless one is very deaf. ;-).

If dandelions were much rarer, we wouldn't class them as weeds. They really brighten up a dull day.

The Sunday Challenge today is: 'Three'. Sets of 3 are everywhere when one starts to look. The PiPs show other examples.

This photo was taken just before the National Trust property, Attingham Park, was closed because of the pandemic.

A new customs warehouse, the third to be constructed, was built in the same place as the previous two had stood. It was commissioned in the summer of 1877, and was designed by architect Georg Bull, city manager in Kristiania. The construction work was led by mason Larsen, builder Christoffersen and master friend A. Eilertsen, all residing in Drammen.

Today's challenge is: Implied triangular composition. No problems with social distancing this morning. We only met 2 dog walkers, and there was plenty of warning and space to move over. This part of the Montgomery Canal is very straight.

I'm rapidly running out of local fences to photograph here. I think that this is a dipping pen for sheep, although I have never seen it used.