When Cows Lie Down

 It wasn't great weather for either walking or taking photographs but I decided to go anyway.

"It's going to rain you know. Everybody knows that"

Down here, under the trees and next to the stream, it's almost dark, despite it being nearly mid-day. Very dark, but very lush and green.

Meadow Cranesbill is flowering in the meadow (where else?).

The grasses are turning to their midsummer hue despite the recent rains.

A fly that's about the size of a bumble bee is busy on the flower heads. It's called a Pellucid Fly and apparently in the right light you can see right through it. It's a fairly common species and I know I've looked up its name before - and promptly forgot it again, of course. In the words of comedian Jimmy Cricket "I'm a fast learner, but an even faster forgetter!" 

An uprooted tree whose base has soon become smothered in ivy, while many small saplings try their luck in the vacated hollow. Ivy can become a major, and mostly unappreciated, presence in the small scraps of woodland around here.

It's so pervasive that it's impossible to ignore. Where some woods have bluebells, wild garlic, or wood anemones spreading between the trees, others have ivy, ivy and ivy. Makes a nice subject to photograph though.

Garden poppies are mostly finished flowering now with seed heads forming, though wild poppies are still on the fields.

A tree I've never noticed before, though I often pass this way.

Roses are looking fantastic in many folk's gardens, though if we get that promised rain I suppose they'll be spoiled.

And it certainly looks like it might. But so far it's stayed dry.

See, it hasn't rained.

"No, but it's going to!"

Take care.