pumpkinstrokemarrow

Following the recent rain, the jelly lichen on the back patio is spreading its wings, fuelled by the water making its way down from the back garden, with the path ending at the top right of the picture acting as the main conduit. Mainly a dull green but with some dark brown.

Up the steps, up the path and under the shed. Probably the furthest extent ever. BH is glaring at it and there is dark talk of visits to the garden centre to buy a suitable weed killer.

Rather better illustrations are to be found at http://www.uklichens.co.uk/ but I don't know of any better specimens as I don't recall ever seeing the stuff before it started blooming in our garden. The book says damp limestone terraces up north.

It is also a good year for blackberry shoots with one of about six feet long overhanging the path at the end of our road. Maybe an inch in diameter where it joins the main branch. I would think that it is the growth of two years. It was also rather dangerous and quite likely to get entangled in someone's face - the very incident which I remember being told that carried off my paternal grandfather when he was younger than I am now and was doing something or other in a field on his holding. Something about the wound to his eye turning to fatal septicemia because he wouldn't go and see the quack about it.

Now we live in a decent suburban road where we look out for our neighbours and don't have many all night parties, so it does not say much for our sense of civic duty that the thing has been hanging over the pavement for some weeks before I get around to cycling the few hundred yards down the road to cut it down. Where were all the other chaps who lived so much nearer? Maybe admiring the thing from their front windows? Would things be any better in Garratt Lane?

To be fair, the offending shoot originated on the bank of a stream and was thus either the responsibility of the Council or of the Water Board. Not for a mere citizen to interfere, to take the bread out of the mouths of their contractors. Perhaps the proper course of action would have been for me to send an email to my LibDem councillor and get her to run with this interesting baton, while we could run a sweepstake on how long it took for the shoot to vanish. Much better use of our time.

Not the first time I have noticed such a thing. A couple of years ago an ornamental bush of box on a grass verge near here, perhaps a cubic metre's worth of bush, was getting overrun by another blackberry plant. The owner of the £500,000 worth of house which fronted onto the bush did nothing about it for months or maybe even years, waiting I think until the council did indeed get around to it.