WIDE WEDNESDAY

Firstly, I apologise for not getting back to anyone last night - I was very tired after my day out and decided that I needed an early night, but thank you for all your kind comments, stars and hearts.  Mr. & Mrs. T. both said how quiet it was in their house this morning - I wonder why?!  

Anyway, I decided that I needed to go for a walk today, otherwise, I knew I would just sit and do nothing and whilst there is nothing wrong with that, I feel I still have to “push myself” to keep doing more each day.

I walked over to the shops, which would normally take me about 10 minutes but took almost 20 today, but I was just meandering.  I said to the lady who served me that it was on days like this that I missed my Mum, because she used to live near to the shops and I would usually call in and see her :-(  However, I decided to call and see my sister, Karen, who also lives near the shops and had a good catch-up with her.  

Karen did offer to give me a lift home, but I thought a walk would do me more good, so set off, looking for something to blip on the way.  As I reached the roundabout, which is at the rear of our house, and which we look out on from our bedroom window, I was sad to see, amongst the silver birches, how bare the horse chestnut trees were, but of course, they have the leaf miner disease, along with many others around here.  This is a small moth with caterpillars that feed inside horse chestnut leaves, causing brown or white blotch mines to develop between the leaf veins.  

These have looked very bad for a few months now and you can see how many leaves are on the ground;  it gives the impression that the tree is dying, although it will survive and apparently, this has almost no effect on the growth rate or health of the trees, although conkers may be slightly smaller - I will have to go out and collect some to see if that is the case.

So this is my offering for Wide Wednesday but of course, having looked at the subject, it is nowhere near what it should be - typical me!  I should have left it until next week then I would have been right!

Here is the first verse of a poem some of us may have learned by heart in our schooldays - but sadly nowadays, there aren’t many horse chestnut trees in the UK that aren’t affected by this disease so it wouldn't be quite true. 

“The Village Blacksmith
Under a spreading chestnut-tree
The village smithy stands;
The smith, a mighty man is he,
With large and sinewy hands;
And the muscles of his brawny arms
Are strong as iron bands.”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

You can read the rest of the poem here.