Theo in the buttercups

John W. called me to say he could fix the damaged parasol today if I cared to pop by.  So after various chores were finished I drove over to his house on the slopes between Whiteshill and Salmon Springs in the Painswick valley.

We snapped one of the wooden supports for the parasol last summer and it seemed such a shame to throw it away, so I asked John if he thought he could help. He is very adept with wood and metal and many delicate things, and today saw the parasol returned to a perfect state once again.

Before we started to fix it we took John's dog Theo for a walk up towards the top of the valley and then down across the stream formed by a small spring  below Kites Nest Farm.  Once we crossed over the stream to return back to John's house, we came across a large patch of mares tail growing at the damp part of the valley bottom whee the buttercups stop. Theo rushed off to chase some unseen (by us) beast and then stood for a good while looking at us.  I couldn't resist a little snap of hi=m in the long grass between the buttercups and mares tail.

After finishing the repairs John offered to show me his latest stereoscopic images shot down the lenses of his microscope.  He had become interested in some mosses and liverworts and hjad just finished preparing a new 3D image of the 'periitome', which is the release mechanism for the spores which mosses produce to spread themselves on the wind.  As always the images are amazing sights into the  delicate inner structures of plants.  The height of the laptop screen on which he showed them represented just one centimetre of the structure but it filled the screen.  I just wish it was easier to show them more widely.

I'm off to a photography course tomorrow in Bristol so I hope to have new skills very soon!  We shall see.