{"id":2513,"date":"2016-05-26T19:59:40","date_gmt":"2016-05-26T18:59:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/?p=2513"},"modified":"2016-05-26T20:04:54","modified_gmt":"2016-05-26T19:04:54","slug":"the-flowqers-that-bloom-in-the-spring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/?p=2513","title":{"rendered":"Daisies pied and violets blue"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The weather was great this afternoon as Mary and I went for a walk with the dogs at the Forvie Nature reserve.\u00a0 Taking notice of the warning to keep dogs on leads during the bird breeding season, we set off through the dunes and\u00a0past the little lochans than can be found there, one with a rather spectacular display of reeds.\u00a0 Everything was dry and\u00a0the May\u00a0flowers making their appearance among the heather clumps and the dune grass.\u00a0\u00a0 Every so often we would spy a little bright blue dots of the violets beside the path and the occasional stalk of lady smocks.<\/p>\n

\"Violet\"<\/a>
Violet<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Lady<\/a>
Lady Smock<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As we sat in the heather for a little breather, a lark rose up above us with its distinctive piping song.\u00a0 Mary broke into song too, as she recalled a setting of the song from the Shakespeare play, Love’s Labours Lost<\/em>.\u00a0 She had taken part in a performance of\u00a0the play when she was at teacher training college at Jordanhill in Glasgow.<\/p>\n

I had been thinking about the same song a couple of days before, although I had said nothing, when I spied some lady smock flowers blooming\u00a0in the Hatton field, but I could not recall all the words of the song.\u00a0 I looked them up when we got home today:<\/p>\n

When daisies pied and violets blue<\/em>
\nAnd lady-smocks all silver-white<\/em>
\nAnd cuckoo-buds of yellow hue<\/em>
\nDo paint the meadows with delight,<\/em>
\nThe cuckoo then, on every tree,<\/em>
\nMocks married men; for thus sings he:\u00a0<\/em>
\nCuckoo; Cuckoo, cuckoo!\u201d
\nO, word of fear,<\/em>
\nUnpleasing to a married ear!<\/em><\/p>\n

When shepherds pipe on oaten straws<\/em>
\nAnd merry larks are ploughmen’s clocks,<\/em>
\nWhen turtles tread, and rooks, and daws,<\/em>
\nAnd maidens bleach their summer smocks,<\/em>
\nThe cuckoo then, on every tree,
\n<\/em>Mocks married men; for thus sings he:\u00a0<\/i>
\nCuckoo; Cuckoo, cuckoo!\u201d O, word of fear,<\/em>
\nUnpleasing to a married ear!<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I had to look up the cuckoo-buds reference…buttercups.\u00a0 All the\u00a0elements were there with us today, daisies, violets, lady smocks, larks.\u00a0 The one thing that was missing was the Cuckoo.\u00a0\u00a0 It’s been a long time since I have heard one, probably not since I was a teenager.\u00a0\u00a0 I wonder if they are still present in Scotland?<\/p>\n

On the way back to the car Mary spied a woolly caterpillar racing across the path.\u00a0 Poppy and Lily had a sniff.\u00a0 I reached for my camera and another song, this time a children’s one came to mind:<\/p>\n

Little Arabella Miller found a woolly caterpillar.<\/em>
\nFirst it crawled up on her mother, then upon her baby brother.<\/em>
\nThey said, “Arabella Miller! take away that caterpillar!”\u00a0<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I know nothing about caterpillar so it was back to the Internet.\u00a0 Our little woolly friend will grow into a Tiger Moth.\u00a0 In America they call it a Woolly Bear.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"IMG_6874\"<\/a>
Tiger moth catterpillar<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The weather was great this afternoon as Mary and I went for a walk with the dogs at the Forvie Nature reserve.\u00a0 Taking notice of the warning to keep dogs on leads during the bird breeding season, we set off through the dunes and\u00a0past the little lochans than can be found there, one with a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2517,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-crudencountry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2513"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2513\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2523,"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2513\/revisions\/2523"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}