Today is being a little odd. Maybe clacking along on the keyboard for a bit will reveal something or maybe I’ll just witter on about a photograph or two. Consider this a miscellany of random bits and pieces stuck together with selotape and chewing gum, even more than usual.

There is an old road reasonably near here that I used to walk or cycle on a lot in my late teens from my parents’ house. Tractors and the occasional car might drive by in the days when turf was still being taken off that bog, but for teh most part you could have the entire thing to yourself. The wildflowers along the road were spectacular. There was an Agricultural show in Athlone we used to enter things in (baking, crafts, that kind of thing) and they had a junior category for “largest selection of named wild flowers” or some such thing, and to this day I remain floored by the girl who bet me the year I entered. I thought I had every wild flower there was but her’s was half the size of mine again. I don’t think it’s quite the thing to be picking them these days, but it was a long time ago.

On a whim I drove down that way with my youngest, we have taken to going on short drives to see a bit of the lay of the land and speculate about what we would like in terms of houses or land or projects in the area if we won money or something. I heartily recommend random drives with teenagers by the way, I think there’s something about the proximity and the way they don’t have to look you in the eye that gets them to ask useful questions or get things off their chests. It started out well enough, we passed some people on bikes enjoying the evening. There was grass in the middle of the road.. it got taller… it became very intimate with the underside of the car indeed… we decided that we really should take the earliest opportunity to turn around and come back some other day without the car. Where we stopped to turn around was gorgeous, a veritable pool of good scented air, all honeysuckle and pine. We horsed around throwing pine cones at each other for a bit and then found the most enormous puffballs. I had remarked very recently that I hadn’t seen any very big puffballs in ages myself, and then there were many, in various stages of life.

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The footprint isn’t one of ours. I found it hilarious, just sitting there on the puffball like it went in for some sort of light body modding.

In other fungus news I spotted some inkcaps recently and it astonishes me just how fast they dissolve into the inky black mush from which they get their name there’s just two days between these shots

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Because I have very, very wonderful sons I now have a Nikon digital camera. I took it for a spin on a walk yesterday and it’s going to take me a little time to remember how to use a camera with more function than point a screen in a general direction and click. But it’s *so good* to have one again. Any name with a * after is one I’m going to have to double check.

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Oh that little froachan bush I didn’t think would produce anything has tiny but lovely froachans and there was an invasion of red soldier beetles

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I’ve just realised my new camera thinks it’s 2010.. really should check settings on these things. Messed about with some cobweb pictures, they just don’t have teh same visual impact when dry though.

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