Inverted Comma

The red admirals have been an absolute joy this autumn, I just can't stop photographing them fluttering around the grape vine. They were at it again today in the sunshine and I got an image that I'm pleased with. However I was thrilled to see a comma gorging on the grapes, nearly as thrilled as I was on March 9th when I captured my first comma of 2017. Wonder if this will be the final one of the year?

The comma was in dire decline in the late nineteeth and the first half of the twentieth century, possibly because of the reduction in hop farming, hops being a key larval foodplant. By the 1960s it had made a comeback, the larvae feeding on stinging nettles. I'm very fond of these 'friendly' angelwing butterflies with their jagged edged, autumnal coloured wings which afford them perfect camouflage.

Today's poem is Tenuous and Precarious by Stevie Smith. http://tomclarkblog.blogspot.co.uk/2010/02/stevie-smith-tenuous-and-precarious.html

SS's friend Lady Lawrence described the poem, composed using Latin words suggested by her husband, as easy but erudite. I haven't enough education to appreciate the erudition but I like Stevie's easiness. Andrew Motion said that Stevie makes silliness serious, and seriousness silly. Those words of hers do roll off the tongue nicely. :)