blue pink

y'all know by now I have one of those things that people have (you know those things that people have?) about sky blue pink well, I also have one of those things that people have (you do know what I'm talking about, don't you?) (cos it won't make much sense if you don't!) (what's your "thing"?) about things that should be blue, but are in fact pink. . .

. . .like pink bluebells. . . and pink forget-me-nots

(and I was going to write about this before
Dave kindly shared his forget-me-nots with us today!)

.
and just recently I've also been noticing the variation in shades of lilac:

(sadly I didn't take any of those photos - I wish I had been able to)

and the lilac reminded me about hydrangeas (which I find a little like camelias) (as in, I don't know what all the fuss is about) which I always thought had blue flowers in acidic soil and pink or purple in alkaline soil*. . . so how does one account for the following:

?!

anyhoo

there we go!

(*it's a little like litmus paper, in that respect, altho neutral litmus in solution turns red in acidic conditions and blue under alkaline, so in fact totally the opposite) (did you know that litmus is a water-soluble mixture of different dyes extracted from lichens? you do now)

symbiotic relationships

ERNST HAECKEL

"Lichens are a symbiotic relationship between a fungus, which builds the body of the lichen (the ‘thallus') and encapsulates a population of algae or photosynthetic cyanobacteria. The main bulk of the lichen is composed of fungal material, which harvests food from its symbiotic partner in the form of photosynthetic sugars. There are an estimated 20,000-30,000 species of lichen worldwide, occupying a vast array of terrestrial and semi-aquatic habitats. Lichens are nature's extreme survivors, and are found on every continent - from the coldest parts of Antarctica, to the driest deserts, to the wettest rainforests, to the highest mountains. Despite this resistance to natural environmental extremes, lichens are sensitive to environmental perturbation, and are used as bioindicators for pollutants, climate change, and in habitat management. Lichens play an important role in the establishment of succeeding (i.e., sequentially following) organisms such as mosses or vascular plants. The bulky tissue of the lichen (particularly the thallus, or body) slowly traps air-borne dust and silt, while the fungal hyphae of the lichen penetrates and helps etch a thin layer of the rock's surface. The fine particles of soil in combination with dead or decaying lichen tissue form a medium where moss spores or vascular plant seeds can establish and grow. Over a long period of time (assuming no mechanical disturbances), a layer of mosses and herbaceous plants will replace these lichens. *Although the period of time may be measured in decades or centuries, it is essentially an instant in the scale of geologic time."

it was my cliff walks around Polzeath and the trip to St Ives that made me think about lichen again

*"the scale of geologic time", huh. . . we don't live our lives in that time scale, do we**

**we live our lives in the minutes and hours it takes to walk thru a wood on an autumn afternoon. . .

I hope you have a wonderful afternoon

I ♥ Polzeath #5

if I had a spare £2 million (yes, unbelievable eh) I'd buy one of these 1930s bungalows, built on the north cliff overlooking the bay, with a large front garden and a little door at the end onto the cliff path. . .

. . . but I don't (I know, how did that happen?): so I will just be content as the passer-by, complete with mobile phone with supa-dupa integrated camera with which I can snap things that fascinate me

such as walls
walls made of slate
slate with lichen growing on it

and I shall just wander along admiring the beauty of nature that doesn't come attached with a price tag

ah, lichen! *happy sigh*

(and sometimes I'll be rather annoyed at my shaky hand,
that causes mobile camera phone photos to be out of focus)

and then I shall find myself a little tucked away place, with a seat

from which I can admire the view:(and later, much much later - was it really ten days ago now? - I shall revisit those memories and share them with my friends)
.

(-:

and who, exactly, was St Ives?

according to those good people over at Wiki:

"Saint Ia of Cornwall (also known as Hia, Hya, Eia or Ives) was a 5th or 6th century Cornish evangelist and martyr. Ia was said to have been an Irish princess, a spiritual student of Saint Baricus; she travelled as a missionary to Cornwall - on, as legend has it, an ivy leaf - where she joined Saints Fingar and Piala and their 777 companions*. Ia was martyred on the River Hayle and buried at St Ives, Cornwall, where St. Ia's Church, St. Ives, of which she is now the patron, was erected over her grave. The town built up around it. "

can you see the church in the photo? the greenery behind it is where you'll find the Hepworth Museum. . .

*do you think this is where the number seven in the nursery rhyme comes from?