Peacock – our first butterfly of 2015
Another good night’s sleep. This seems to be a side effect of sorting my health out properly, but it’s early days so far so I won’t get too cheerful just yet.
I have a big day of article writing planned, but after the last few days I am not feeling confident. I’ve slipped back into my old procrastinating ways during the last week or two, and have also been taking it easy because I’ve been ill. The two combined have led to a drop in productivity for articles and a struggle to finish any poetry properly.
Despite that I still think I’m being more productive than I was at the end of last year, so this is good.
Mint Moth
I am, once more, struggling to find any fluidity in the blog. As I spend most of the day doing boring things this isn’t surprising. I also write in the morning, by which time I have usually forgotten anything exciting. I may have to start writing in the evening, but experience with that suggests I will end up forgetting to post, or will end up writing after midnight, which is not good.
We had a Brimstone in the garden yesterday. This is three or four we have spotted this spring, which feels optimistic. Julia bought some seeds yesterday (she was out at the Garden Centre with my sister) which are a mix to provide food for butterflies and insects. We will be planning more sunflowers this year too. Small plans, but at least we are still planning.
She also bought simnel cake. It was very good but regrettably small. However, it is a proper seasonal treat, unlike mince pies which now stretch from September to December and Hot Cross Buns, which are almost available all year.
Red Admiral
There is, it seems a move afoot to change the date of Mothering Sunday (commonly known as Mother’s Day) in the UK to match up with Mother’s Day in the USA. Just another bit of cultural colonialism from the USA.
Mother’s Day in the USA dates from just before the Great War and was meant to celebrate motherhood, though it quickly became criticised for being overly commercial. Mothering Sunday in the UK is a religious festival going back to around the 8th Century, though it is now generally known as Mother’s Day these days and is also very commercial. The date is set as the fourth Sunday in Lent rather than a fixed date. The two days are basically the same, but I don’t see why they need to be on the same date.
Comma
I am glad to hear you are doing better and got a good night’s sleep!
Patience and common sense will do the trick, as I often tell people. If only I listened to myself. 🙂
I am glad that you got a good night’s sleep. When you have finished with it, you could send it up to me as I could really do with one.
I appreciate your caution in not getting too cheerful too early but I have hope that a certain amount of mild optimism will be justified soon. Healthy eating does produce wonderful results, and I intend to try it one of these days.
I seem to have missed out on Mothering Sunday. Perhaps being sent away to boarding school at a very early age diminishes the importance of parents in your life.
By the time I’ve finished with it I’m not sure it’s worth having. I am having treatment for what I will call “circulation issues” and the absence of pain has done remarkable things for both sleep and cheeriness. The strange thing is that until it disappeared I hadn’t realised my legs were painful.
Oh, those butterflies! Especially the peacock, which I am obsessed with. Very bitter that we don’t have them here.
Mother’s Day is very commercial, but it’s also fun. Funny how the two often go together. 😉
A lot of Eastern Europe celebrates it on 8th March to coincide with International Women’s Day but I suppose it’s easier to adopt the American day unless you have a traditional day. I doubt whether ours is any different to yours apart from the date. Everything in commercial these days.
Heaven forbid that you should get too cheerful. Didn’t you know that we must always fall in line with USA?
No, it would be bad to be too cheerful. Yes, including spellcheckers.
Those butterflies are beautiful. I don’t think we have as much ariety around Ballarat. Of course there are many other elsewhere. I don’t think we naturalise American celebration out of laziness – I think that the huge supermarkets do it to us in thanks for making their bottom line balance out for the shareholders.
Yes, in these days of international ownership even governments don’t get to make the decisions.
Butterflies are wonderful things – https://www.bbcearth.com/factfiles/animals/insects-arachnids/butterfly
We don’t have many species compared to most other places, but as I can’t name or identify all of ours I don’t really need more. :-),