Yesterday`s run was a delight: two and a half miles of sunshine and shade as I rambled through the meadow and down along the tow path. I looped around the route twice, giving me a total of five miles.
The Tow Path in June
It was hot out there, so the shade of the tow path was very welcome indeed.
And plenty of this one too. Of course, that`s no guarantee I`ll be able to name it. Luckily, I have the most fantastic book “The Wildflowers of Ireland” by Zoe Devlin. It`s a pure pleasure to browse and it`s full of beautifully taken photos from a botanist who`s very passionate about her work. I`ve also found Zoe`s website just superb for flower identification purposes. She also gives a little history on the spread of each plant, and their location in Ireland. And all with beautifully taken photographs.
Is this Herb Robert?
For all that, I still am unsure if I`ve identified the above plant correctly. So chip in, if you know what it is and put me out of my misery please.
I ran the first loop of the route non stop. The second part, I did at intervals, stopping to take the photos and running a little harder. It was just another way to vary the running, as much as anything else.
Just bumbling along
Hedwiga mentioned a lovely site her in blog yesterday. It`s all about identifying these little creatures. She also has an adorable photo of a bee on that blog-along with heaps of wildlife observations.
I particularly love bees. That may be because I grew up with them and remember the great big honeycombs our granddad hauled from his beehives each year. Or just the realisation that the little guys do hugely important work with all their pollinating efforts across the countryside. This little fellow did the pollinating business all along a blackberry hedge.
And finally…
A pause at the canal bridge. Yep, that`s my foot. About as close to a selfie as I`ll ever get! Spot the car key? Thumbs down to running shorts which don`t have zipped pockets. I was thinking my lace up solution was a good one, until I thought that all that pounding might interfere with the central locking mechanism. Hmmm, what do I know? Anyway, it`s time to root out the wrist pocket again.
The best bit about this run? Not an ache or a pain anywhere. This is a first because it`s taken an absolute age for my feet to recover from October`s (yeah, a long time ago) marathon and my lower back had been aching right through most runs lately. I think I`ve found the lower back gremlin-the car. I`ve been really hopeless at post run stretching. I used to jump in the car and go. Now, I take a ten minute walk after my runs, stretch out a little too and it seems to be making the difference. Live and learn, as they say.
Can you believe Juneathon is nearly over?
redhenrun 
Beware that foot doesn’t slip! Thoughts of a drenched Red Hen flapping about have just lashed along one of the dirt tracks of my mind! 😉
Yes Herb Robert, as Hedwigia says, smelly!
I used to run with my car key in my hand till I fell on it when tripping over, and had to call the AA out to rescue me. There are a lot of little pieces in a car key!
And they`re expensive to replace.
oooh yes..both of mine are taped up. I don’t want to pay the £90 odd for a replacement, just because I am repetitively clumsy!
Like you I wish I could identify species of plant, tree, bird, insect etc. I was brought up as a townie. I guess the best way to learn would be to run/walk with someone who knows this stuff.
…or put pictures up where someone can identify them! A good place for identifying things in UK/Ireland is ispot.org.uk You will very often get an id within 5 minutes of loading a picture, sometimes even faster. Have fun!
Excellent! Thank you for that. I`ve bookmarked it for future reference. A really useful site.
That would be an interesting way to run, wouldn`t it? Almost like those running city tours, except it would be running nature ones instead. Or you could do running history ones in Jersey, Roy!
There`s lots of wildlife in the towns, Roy. Townies being a wilder breed in themselves!
Thanks for the mention! That bee looks like an Early Bumble Bee to me – maybe a male one, with that yellow face, but I could be wrong about that. Much more sure about the flowers though – it’s elder (Sambucus nigra) and we have a big cake-boxful of the flowers, stripped off the stems and soaking with lemons and sugar. My daughter is making elderflower cordial. Yum. Mind you, it took her several hours to strip the flowers off!
Your daughter is seriously impressive. Mind telling me if the herb robert is actually herb robert? Gotta invest more time in taking better photos, for sure!
Lovely pictures, by the way. But I don’t see any herb robert? Where? Am I being daft?
My grandad used to keep bees too. They had a honey-extracting centrifuge that they kept in a mini-cellar under their kitchen floor. Ah, memories of childhood! I used to love lying on their lawn watching bees visiting pansies and snapdragons…
Oh, thank you so much! I`d left that herb Robert -or whateveritis-photo out! Hadn`t realised til now. It`s there now anyway, but don`t worry if you don`t get a chance to get back to it. As to childhood memories, Grandad didn`t have a centrifuge but I clearly recall the large honey frames for the beehives and him all dressed up in his protective gear as he went about honey stealing business.
Yup, that’s Herb Robert. A little wild geranium, that gets amazingly red leaves if the water supply is poor. Very smelly leaves if rubbed. Very easy to weed – nicely snappable roots – but just about pretty enough to leave it to flower anyway. I love the name. We also have Herb Bennet (or sometimes Bennett) aka Wood Avens, with little yellow flowers, but that has very, very tough roots and is really hard to get out of gaps in paving.
re: the key’s central locking mechanism: your car doors are probably wildly locking and then unlocking the. entire. time.
Haha! I don`t think so! But I won`t be attaching my key to my shoe again any time soon!