Botany is clearly something I have missed out on – I can identify the more common garden flowers e.g. roses, honeysuckle etc, but I am woefully lacking in knowledge about wild flowers with the exception of the really obvious ones such as bluebells, snowdrops and primroses. My lock-down wanderings have allowed me to spend more time looking in the hedgerows and I have taken to photographing ones I like and trying to identify them. When I say trying to identify them, I mean that in the loosest terms, I basically forward them to my colleague, Laura (something of an authority on all things plant & vegetable) who helps me out.

First we have Mullein

Followed by Fox and Cubs

And my personal favourite, Hairy Vetch, which given the stage of lock-down we were in, something most of us could identify with in one way or another.

My walks have generally resulted in weather, wildlife or nature encounters in one form or another which is another added bonus of lock-down. Deer are a common sighting as were hares, before the crops grew (altogether harder to photograph), kestrels and red kites are in the fields behind us and a kingfisher was a flash of blue on a riverside walk.