Down yonder green valley

The Ash Grove
"Down yonder green valley where streamlets meander
When twighlight is fading I pensively rove;
......."

The words of this song cause me great anxiety, if not to say terror, whenever I hear them.
It all started decades ago. I was 11 years old, it was my first week at my Grammar School, and we were about to have our first music lesson. We were all lined up and instructed to sing, in turn, the first verse of this fine old song. I never could and still can't sing to save my life. At the end of the first line, the kindly old master simply patted me on the head and said, "Never mind, lad". Sniggers all round; oh, the utter shame!

The greenery in the photograph is the green alga Enteromorpha. These days it grows much more profusely than it should because the waters of the Ythan estuary are enriched by nitrate and phosphate fertilisers leaching from the agricultural land in the catchment area of the estuary. The mats of weed are a problem because they cover the muddy areas where shore-birds like to feed and when the weed dies off and rots later in the year, it reduces the oxygen levels in the mud, killing the invertebrates that live there.
My blipping will be intermittent, at best, over the next couple of weeks. Normal service will be resumed, thereafter.