In the garden

garden-knittingthbThe sock has been out in the garden. Just a couple more inches of foot to go before shaping the toe now.

I have named the project: Cash and Burn – though, according to this pic, it’s a bit more like Orbison 🙂

Had to laugh, having been sat out in the sun in t-shirt, sun-hat, and shades, when somebody walked past wearing woolly hat, gloves, and padded anorak… all hunched up as though she was feeling the cold. Not a local, I would hazard a guess.

bogthb I meant to post this last week – a not very good photo of the bog in the field next to my garden. I have been very taken by the variety of greens in it of late, and the lovely marsh marigolds.

I took this particular photo when I noticed some peculiar growth among the irises and sedges. Unfortunately it was far too difficult to reach.

Today I was at the top of the garden, mulling over the notion of a chicken run, when I noticed that we had the interesting growth on our side of the fence as well. Far easier to photograph!

whatthb

It’s fascinating stuff.

Neither of us knew what it was. I said it reminded me of horsetails, looking very primeval as it does. Also slightly reminiscent of asparagus, in a way… Googling did not help, we clearly could not find the correct search terms. So I turned to those good folk at Flickr in the group ID Please – and received an answer in seconds. Literally, seconds.

This turns out to be a Water Horsetail (ooh, I’m good!)

Botanical Name:
Equisetum fluviatile
Other names:
Swamp horsetail , Jointed rush
Genus:
Equisetum
Species:
E. fluviatile ~ E. fluviatile is a clump-forming perennial with hollow, rough-textured, corrugated, jointed stems and often long, thin-jointed branches. Cone-like spore producing strucutures form at the end of fertile stems.

And, guess what? According to Plants for a Future – you can eat this, treating it as asparagus!

I’d say that my instincts are intact.

Anyway, it’s a very green photograph and thus a good PS3 Earth one.