Get to Know Nature ...

Great contest from @phoenixwren - you still have one day left to win a share of steem basic income. Here's my entry:

A Flower

These are bearded iris, grown in my neighbour's garden, the blue caught my eye. Sorry they are the wrong way up, that's steemit.

These flowers were planted by Anwar and his wife, our Muslim neighbours from Pakistan. Well, more immediately from Bradford, where Anwar had been a bus driver. They moved here when Anwar retired to be nearer their children, two were in Leicester and two in London. They loved their garden and planted many rose trees, bulbs and vegetables.

Anwar was the kindest person, he was very happy if there was anything he could do to help you. One year, he noticed that he hadn't seen me much and came and knocked on my door to see if anything was wrong. I had been ill, and he fetched my shopping and brought me little meals to eat. One day, while I was sleeping, he came along with another neighbour and his lawnmower and they cut my grass, which had grown about three feet high.

Anwar and his wife moved last year to a bungalow about a mile away. Their lovely garden has gone to rack and ruin. But every now and then, something like these irises will bloom in a great show of colour and remind me of him.

This is a wild rose that has decided to grow at the back of the vegetable garden. In fairness, it was there before the vegetable garden. My lovely neighbour, Mary, used to protect it and encourage it to grow. It's a climbing rose and will clamber over anything. I'm trying to direct it up the garden fence and, preferably, all over the invading bamboo from next door. As well as the white flowers, it has very dark green, very shiny leaves, and, in the autumn, bright red hips.

A rock as big as a (small) person

Ha ha, this one is even worse - completely upside-down!

I was a bit stumped about this one. I live in a built-up area and big rocks are a big long way away. Then I remembered this memorial in the Botanic Garden to the Registrar, Harold Martin (the Garden is named after him). There's a brass plate on the rock saying it is in his memory, but nothing about the rock - what kind it is (I would guess granite) and where it came from (maybe Wales).

It's covered in lichen and starting to be overgrown by the plants around it. I wonder what Harold would have made of being remembered by a rock. It's placed deep in the heart of the garden, just by the path leading to the Mediterranean and Tropical greenhouses. I wonder how they got it in, or whether it was just a handy giant rock lying about the place.

A tree too big to hug

This is a Hybrid Wingnut. It seems to have come from the Arnold Arboretum in the USA. There are two dates on the label - 1969 and 1908. It's not the largest tree in the Garden - that's a Lawson's Cypress; there's also several Giant Redwoods and some Blue Atlas Cedars, which come from north Africa.

A sideways close up of the very knotted and gnarled trunk with its botanical label.

A wild animal!

This handsome fellow had had an outing before in a previous contest, but he was so very charming and wild animals are so very shy that I've brought him out again even if he is upside down this time.

There is a greedy pigeon in this picture, having a great feed off the lawn, but this is as near as it would allow me to come (nowhere near). I also saw a blackbird and a robin, and a jackdaw. No squirrels and no bees today.

Your bare feet on the earth

A disembodied bare hand, rather than bare feet, holding some fine soil I've put together myself. This was a mix of organic compost made by my personal household of worms and slugs from the finest vegetable trimmings, local Leicester clay and horticultural sand from the plant nursery a mile or two away. It's supporting a yellow courgette which declined to be in the picture.

A plant that produces food a human can eat

That's easy, I thought, I've got a vegetable bed full of them. But then I wondered about the nature bit - should I be looking for wild food plants. I thought of elder and brambles - so common they are thought of as weeds:

Elder is a right scraggy shrub and smelly with it, but it has very pretty sweet-smelling elderflowers, just coming into bloom at this time of year. These are used to make a light, almost sparkling wine and elderflower cordial, which is lovely on a hot sunny day. You can also fry the lightly battered flowers and dredge them with icing sugar and eat with ice cream. Delicious but a bit of a faff. You can also make wine from the dark elderberries.

The serrated leaves growing the middle of my rocket (top left) and spinach (right) is a bramble shoot. These will grow to enormous lengths, covered in thorns, with pretty pink flowers and fat juicy blackberries in the autumn. They grow in any rough ground, especially if there is a bit of sunshine, and you'll often find them on railway enbankments.

The elder grows at the end of my front garden and makes a welcome screen against the busy A6 leading, eventually, after about 100 miles, to London. The bramble is all over the front garden and is taking over the back. The blackberries are delicious in fruit pies and crumbles, and people often go out picking them in the autumn.

However, on my travels, I came across these:

Sea kale which grows wild on cliff tops in coastal areas. It can withstand salt spray, high winds and drought and tastes delicious lightly steamed or sauteed.

I'm not sure if you can eat this particular variety, but fungi grow all over the UK and, if you are good at foraging and know your chanterelles from your deadly poisonous ones, you can have a great feast.

Great contest, really enjoyed investigating trees and plants. It was overcast here today, and quite breezy, so not many insects around. Plenty of birds and, perhaps if I had been more patient and immobile, they would have come nearer. We saw a huge black rat yesterday down by the canal, but I wasn't quickwitted enough to get out my phone!

Leicester Race for Life

I'm running the 5k Race for Life on 8 July 2018 and raising funds for Cancer Research UK. If you would like to support me, please vote for one of my running posts:
Friday fog and plog
Monday morning run
Thank you!