A good day for ferns . . .

. . . . but not for much else! It was dull but dry to begin with and I really needed to get on with some gardening. All I managed this morning however was to bury dear little Susie - hard to find a spot that wasn't full of rocks or tree roots. Anyway, I finally dug a hole and slipped her in. Goodbye puss.

By 2pm I began to think that if I wanted to take a Blip I would need to get on with it - it was so gloomy and wet and getting dark. So I'm afraid this is an EB, though I did want to check that my fern sporelings were OK in the polythene bags. The pan on the right was sown in June 2023 and shows a good crops of small ferns, which I shall leave until the spring before disturbing. That on the left was sown in July this year. What looks like moss is actually a mass of prothalli, the first stage of fern production from spores. I love spotting the first signs of tiny fronds emerging from the green mass! 

Spent the afternoon continuing to write up my second London day out from last month. This was a jaunt from Vauxhall Station along the Albert Embankment to Lambeth and thence to Borough Market in Southwark, using my 100 or so photographs to guide me along the route. A surprise around every corner and something else to investigate. Whatever did we do before we had the Internet!

Pompous Quote of the Day: 'The bright colours of flowers are admired by the least intellectual but the beauty of form and texture of ferns requires a higher degree of mental perception and a more cultivated intellect for its proper appreciation'. - Abraham Stansfield.