A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare

W. H. Davies

We took time out on Wednesday to buy sandwiches from the supermarket and take a drive into the countryside. It wasn’t as comfortable as it could have been because I had a feeling that I should have planned better and made our own sandwiches. In my defence we didn’t know what time Julia’s meeting would end and everything was a bit chaotic.

Shopping at the supermarket still doesn’t feel comfortable, paying the cost of ready made sandwiches seems extravagant after months of economy, and aimlessly driving in the countryside also seems wrong.

On the other hand, sitting at home is beginning to wear a bit thin too.

We eventually found a verge to park on and ate sandwiches whilst watching the local wildlife – which was butterflies. The flies were too small to see from the car, the grasshoppers were hidden and though we heard the call of pheasants and saw a few wood pigeons there didn’t seem to be much bird life about either.

By the time I got out of the car, brushing crumbs from my newly decorated shirt, the Peacock and the White butterflies had all gone and the promising reddish brown ones all turned out top be Gatekeepers, which are common, and not much more interesting than the Peacocks and Whites.

I clearly need to brush up on my butterfly stalking technique,and my grasshopper hunting methods as I managed to see them only as they leapt to escape my feet. I didn’t get a single grasshopper shot, just  a few flies as a relief from Gatekeepers.

Even my attempts at photographing sloes were thwarted by a sparse selection and poor lighting. It’s bad when you can’t even get a shot of something that just hangs there without moving…

My efforts are a far cry from the fine efforts made by Beating the Bounds, a blog I haven’t read for a while. On seeing this post, I was glad I had chosen to return.

As you can tell from the captions, I have returned to my original style of uninformative caption. I must do better, but, to be honest, I’ve made it through the first 62 years without trying too hard, so why change now?

They say that hard work never killed anybody, but that’s what I thought about Covid 19 to start with. It seems silly to take a chance.

The final shot is the Grasshopper that emerged from the garden when we returned home on Friday– displaying itself on the tarmac. This is not the setting you most associate with an insect that has the word “grass” in its name.