The lesson here? Even a common thistle, the sort you rip out when you are in a gardening frenzy, the What Does it Think it is Doing THERE? kind of thistle, can be beautiful. And if you sit still in the sun, live in the moment and look at what’s around, you will notice loveliness.
Except that, as soon I got to the noticing bit, I moved on to thistle photography. You can annoy yourself and everybody near you if you have the irritating habit of constantly grabbing your phone to capture ‘moments’.
Never mind. I have lots of lessons learnt now. Here are more.
Chickens Die and not all Chicken Deaths are equal
I can walk past a hundred dead chickens in a supermarket without wondering what sort of personalities they had. Good job too as that would take hours and you can’t tell much once they are bagged up.
But when one of ours keeled over and was quickly despatched to a shallow grave, it was different. She was an unassuming kind of chicken who never liked to trouble anybody and didn’t even make a big deal about feeling unwell. It was a sad moment with a respectful burial.

Three chickens left and what did they do about it? Any chicken tears? Did they miss her?
Yes they did, and a week later they set about digging her up. Somebody observed this and said something callous about ‘good source of maggots’ and I had to put an extra paving stone down to stop them.
It is OK to give up on Houseplants

This might happen if you leave them in direct sunshine with no water for weeks and then flood the roots until they rot.
Was it your fault? No. These plants could have tried harder. If a houseplant does this to you, take it to the bin.
Feng Shui is a Fight.
Stuff likes to hang around, with the plea ‘I might be useful one day’. For me it was curtains, left here by an ancestor and hung on to by me, because they came from Habitat, which means they were tasteful. All Habitat stuff was tasteful (in the 70’s).
If you move bags of curtains around for decades you will eventually get a fit of Feng Shui. This is a Good Thing but you have to seize the moment. Don’t waste time thanking stuff or giving it a retirement speech, just drag it out.
Grab some more houseplants along the way too. Especially if you have too many spider plants. They were also stylish, in the 70’s.

The moment the curtains tried to get out of car boot. Are the spider plants helping them? Wrestling this lot into the car felt like loading reluctant livestock.
Always take a Picnic. And the Right Map
It was the start of an epic coastal walk near Budleigh Salterton and a big discussion on where the start of that walk might be? You can see how perfect the picnic was, because there were crisps.
The map was less perfect.

There was a hidden footpath near that bench, but 2017 roadmap of Great Britain did not mention it. Now I know why professional walkers don’t carry maps like this. Luckily we found that path, did the epic walk and ended up in the river.
Swim with your Mouth Shut
Years ago it was Brexit. Friends and families were torn apart as they took their stances across that great divide. These days we stand on the edge of the water and argue about what might be in it.

Surfers against sewage will tell you which waters might be cleanish but most news channels will put the fear of God into you about all of them.
If you want to swim you have to do a risk assessment on the water for levels of murk and scum. On this day we decided that the water was only brown because of recent landslips, and there was Nothing to Worry About At All.
But we kept our mouths shut just in case…
It is Easy to Ignore Parliament
Another day, another river. I would not swim in this one but the views were great.

And so were the conversations. If you put a lot of nice people on one boat they don’t even look up when they go past Westminster. One of the most iconic buildings in London and everybody is completely ignoring it. Probably the best thing to do at the moment.
If you don’t want to think about our government, talk to a friend instead, and look the other way.
Vegetables can be as Pretty as Thistles.
It was surprising to find all these flowers in the vegetable patch. I picked loads and wondered how they got there.

It turns out that somebody planted Jerusalem Artichokes. This is a sort of vegetable that you can’t buy in Tesco One-Stop, either because it is exotic or because nobody knows how to cook it. More news on that in the Winter ‘How to make nourishing soup’ blog post. Coming up shortly. Or maybe longly. Who knows?
So are Sunsets
My phone is stuffed with these.

This moment is called ‘Sunset on Devon Lane’. I can’t actually remember the moment but my phone can.
Must start trying to live in the moment more often.
Always a good start to the morning. I loved theses photos. Remember the moments.. brilliant summer
This mornings chuckle done. 😉