Monday 21st September 2026

Monday again.

Every day is like Monday.

Or Tuesday.

Or Wednesday.

Or whatever.

Anyway. A quiet day, one with no appointments or churches to have to visit, or orchids to photograph.

Just Monday.

Re-reading my old blogs, I see I would go out, while not every day, and perhaps not most days. I would go for a walk, some days. In summer and peak butterfly, most days in a week.

I had not been out for a walk over the fields to Windy Ridge in weeks, perhaps since before we went on holiday.

So, when Jools asked if we would be going out for a walk, I said we would.

We had coffee, breakfast and second brews, then sat outside so we could catch some rays, and be with Mulder and Scully. Mulder lay stretched out like the old tart he is.

But he's happy.

We go out at ten, just a tad too late as it's already warm, and butterflies might be too flighty already.

I wanted to check the fields were lucerne had been sown over the years to see of there were any Star thistles, which have appeared this year in a few places where lucerne had been sown.

None here, and because I was looking down at plants, I bemoaned the lack of Clouded yellows.

Like those two, Jools said pointing.

Indeed.

A third flew right by me, but didn't settle, and anyway, I didn't have the big camera with me.

Jools was picking sloes as she went, so even with my dawdling, she was soon lost to sight behind me.

But I stopped at the bench, hidden behind the hedge, knowing she loves to stop here too. And in ten minutes I heard her footsteps, and then there she was!

We sat for twenty minutes, then I set off for the wood, looking for fungi among the fallen trees, but only found King Alfred's Cakes.

So it goes.

I walk through the wood, then down the hill towards Collingwood, then along it to Station Road so I could take shots of the Toadflax growing in the hedge on the other side of the road.

And so began the great football famine of 2026, with only international games to sustain us, and none of those until the weekend it seems.

I sat outside in the warm sunshine reading my new book, but once the shadow on the hedge covered the seats, it was cool enough for a jumper.

And so after dinner, we do our hobbies, and outside the shadows deepen and night falls, soon Orion will rise, hunting among the cosmos.