I’ve got four new photographs to share with you this week, I’m literally having the best butterfly year of my life! It helps that the weather has been amazing and my wildlife garden is more or less finished (it will never be totally finished of course!) But creating a nectar rich garden and letting the space re-wild as much as possible has brought so many new types of butterfly to my garden this year.
Including this little lovely thing, she’s a female (I think) Clouded Yellow butterfly (Colias croceus) who is one of our regular and specular migrant species! They are seen in the UK most years but when the weather is like it has been then these guys are known for mass migrations and create something called a ‘clouded yellow year’, which is cool.
Once again I’m a little late posting, but the week got away from me slightly!
With all of the amazing weather we’ve been having I took a little time to explore Penlee Battery which is a nature reserve down near Rame head. I had so much fun during my adventures that day and I wanted to take you guys along with me so you can enjoy the wonders of Penlee battery and all of the wonderful nature too! I hope these photos bring as much brightness to your day as much as they did mine.
It was beautiful I literally can’t wait to go back!
It’s a wonderful place to walk and enjoy some time with nature, I’ve become fascinated with how meadows work and the different grasses all work together to create a whole ecosystem and support so much life.
There were plenty of Large white butterflies (one of my favourites) happily fluttering around the brambles, I even spotted a few Ringlet butterflies in the distance as well, although the photos weren’t particularly good through the grass.
Guess what?! I did it again…I really need to learn that when scheduling posts I need to actually set them schedule not draft (rookie mistake!!).
This weeks post comes courtesy of all the lovely weather we’ve been having as I recently spent some time exploring Penhale Dunes.
It was beautiful.
Penhale dunes is an amazing set of really tall (90 metres in places) Atlantic facing sand dunes, the area is classed as a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and a Special Area of Conservation (SAC) and spans a whopping 620 hectares.
Can you believe it, we’re already at the first Friday in April!? This week I thought I’d post a One Frame and it feels like an age since I posted a proper landscape shot.
This is the view as I cross over a rickety old wooden bridge into one of my favourite hiking spots called Pendrift Bottom, its basically a series of steep ups and downs with some wide-open fields, a little marsh and so many types of animals and insects. Last year I even heard my first cuckoo when I was there in the summer, and theres always slow worms and fleeting glimpses of deer in the distance.
Also the name is pretty humorous.
It actually took this photograph last May and literally can’t wait to spend more sunny days wandering there this year.
Standing on this bridge I pretty much feel like I’m crossing the river into a magic nature filed world, like Middle Earth but with no orcs, I like to believe that if you follow this river long enough you might find Rivendell.
I hope you like this little slice of natury goodness as much as I do because it fills me a great amount of positivity and happiness. Is there anything you feel particularly blessed to be part of?
Thank you so much for reading this post, and have a lovely, peace filled week!
I’ve got a new One Frame to share with you this week, my first one of 2025!!
Something I really love doing when I’m out hiking is to not only look up and enjoy the beauty of the trees and the sky (and of course butterflies in the summer) but I also like floor-watching when I’m in places like a woodland.
This rather lovely little mushroom is one I found during a trip to Cabilla and Reprice woods in Bodmin, which is touted as one of the finest ancient woodland in Cornwall. Its known for having many ancient (aka over 400 years old) oak trees and is home to many, many types of animals including but not limited to, six types of bat, deer, a variety of birds and even otters. As well as butterflies and dragonflies in the summer.
It also has mushrooms!
I love getting down to the level of fungi, it’s like a miniaturised world. I like to imagine that where mushrooms pop up fairies have previously landed.
Cabilla is a pretty magical place to wander although every time I go there I end up with at least three ticks on me – even though I’m drenched in anti-bug spray.
Also did you know a really handy way to remove ticks from your clothing is with a lint roller (for pets you need a special remover tool).
So yeah, that’s it for this week, do you ever floor-watch when hiking? Hopefully next weeks post is gonna be something artsy.
Thank you so much for reading this post, and I wish you a prosperous week ahead!
I don’t know about you but I often find winter a tough time of year to connect with. Christmas is always amazing as well as celebrating the solstice in December but it generally just rains a lot and is rather dull and grey in this part of the UK.
Of course there are still plenty of things to do, I’ve got bird feeders in both the front and back gardens and love watching all the little birdies (and the squirrels!) but nature is generally in hibernation and you can’t really play outside in it.
I suppose staying upbeat this winter has been helped by the fact we’ve had more snow! It wasn’t quite as good as the snow we had back in late November but it gave me a chance to get out and about with my camera and I wanted to take you with me so you can enjoy the pretty countryside too! I hope these photos bring as much joy to your week as they did mine.
To start my icy adventure I headed to one of my favourite spots near home, because of the surrounding views I like to imagine that this is a gateway into Middle Earth.
Before I start, I totally meant to post this last week but due to storm Bert I had no power (the perils of living in the countryside!!).
I am so unbelievably excited about this post as before the storm properly hit I woke up to five whole inches of snow!
Snow is one of those things that I will never get tired of and usually when we do get it here its only a light dusting, so the fact it was so deep was amazing (I literally haven’t seen so much snow since I was a kid when we lived in Scotland).
Obviously I just had to go walking in it and wanted to take you with me so you can enjoy the pretty winter atmosphere and stroll through the countryside too! I hope these photos bring as much happiness to your day as much as they did mine.
Starting off our wintery walk, I headed to one of the local fields to snap a quick landscape shot, all the fields looked so serene, every one could’ve been a scene on a Christmas card.
I’ve got a new One frame to share with you this week, I recently spent the day at a place called Wheal fortune – which is an old Cornish mining sight used for mining copper and tin up until the 1880’s.
Anyway, its been an age since I posted a landscape shot (as opposed to a tree shot) and this was such an amazing setting to be in. The mining systems in Cornwall are incredible – this is actually where the pollutants washed away and seeing how the ores have stained the landscape through human activity is weirdly heavy on the soul.
It does however make a beautiful landscape to photograph – it kinda reminds me of a Bob Ross painting (he was an oil painter in the 80/90’s and an all round nice guy) he liked to paint happy little trees…I’m very much of the opinion of in life always try to be a bit like Bob Ross!
I love the layers of this image, there’s the reflective water, the red/orange stained rocks which moves into the bright and rich tones of green and a moody sky. The views of the whole site were both amazing and horrific – its comes as a shock when you see how we (as humans) are willing to destroy the landscape in search of metals and the damage it leaves behind.
That’s it for this week, I hope you like the little slice of landscape serenity. How is the weather where you are? Next weeks post is shaping up to be a new surprise Butterfly tale!
Thank you so much for reading this post, and I wish you a prosperous week ahead!
Welcome back to another edition of my random ramblings…how are ya?!
One of my favourite quotes in life is from TheSecret Garden which reads;
If you look the right way, you can see the whole world is a garden.
Frances Hodgson Burnett
Incase I haven’t mentioned it before, I love being outside in nature and gardening is so soothing for the soul.
Anyway, this is the third Fleeting Thought, it’s been like three months since the last one (where have those months gone!!) and I’ve written a haiku about new leaves- you’ve been warned!
So here goes…
I’ve finally taken the plunge into organised gardening (it’s been one of my life goals since forever!) it seems to create much more work than my regular type of gardening which has always generally consisted of one of two simple methods (1) open seed packets and scatter at will or (b) buy plant, dig hole for plant, plant plant.
Today I wanted to share my second Fleeting Thought with you. If you’re reading one of my blog posts for the first time (hi/friendly wave) and if your back and happy to read more of my ramblings (massive hug and a beaming smile!!).
For the uninitiated Fleeting Thought is something I’ve come up with while trying to post more of my feelings and be a bit more blog-ish, these wordy posts might sometimes include stories or poetry or maybe be a place were I can put photos/doodles that are a bit random and wouldn’t get a full post.
Now, I’ve also written a haiku – you’ve been warned!
Ready here we go!
Have you ever watched someone create something and thought Yeah, I’ll take a whack at that, it doesn’t look too hard!
Well, I came across sand sculpting online when I discovered that Cornwall hold a few sandcastle competitions in the summer and couldn’t resist having a go on a recent trip to the beach…even though its February and at the very most 13 degrees!
Was I the only lunatic playing in the sand, whilst wearing a wooly jumper…absolutely.
I haven’t built a sandcastle since I was little – one of my favourite childhood memories is my mum, sister and I used to build a boat when on the beach that had a bucket steering wheel, and we’d sail it on various adventures. I thought sand sculpting might be fun to try…it is very much enjoyable, but is much harder than it looks! So on that note I thought I’d share my first (and only) sand sculpting effort.
Also, while I personally love the idea that the human fascination with sandcastles began when mankind first stepped on a beach, there’s an eternal mystery in not knowing who built the first one.
ArtyMissK 
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