Cygneous

Cow parsley lined the narrow road out of Bag Enderby - the commonest plant of our roadside verges. And in the more shaded, wooded areas I found blue and green mats of the small bugle flower, one of the dead nettle family, and well known as a cure-all. Nicholas Culpeper, the 17th century herbalist, wrote that it cured 'wounds, thrusts and stabs', which says a lot in a little about the 17th century - and, on reflection, it might be useful today too... Culpeper says it can cure every ailment from ulcers and broken bones to gout and delirium tremens. This panacea-plant is also supposed to be a narcotic. Perhaps this narcotic quality does provide some temporary relief from pain - persuading you it has eradicated the illness for good?

The occasional butterfly fluttered by - a white, a blue, a small tortoiseshell, an orange tip, several speckled wood - and I also noticed that bees and other insects were now active again. My path passed this row of trees, making for a gleam of gold in the middle distance...

This proved to be neither a yellow brick road nor a rainbow's pot of gold, but, more prosaically, yet another field of oilseed rape, with a small lake fringed with bulrushes beyond it...

... and in one corner of the pool I found a female mute swan (pen) sitting on her nest...

As I approached nearer and nearer, trying to get a good camera shot, the male (cob) appeared out of nowhere...

The closer I came, the higher he arced his wings in warning. I crept away, leaving them both to their cygneous, family affairs...

I was almost back at my starting point in Hagworthingham when I spotted this single Scots pine tree, surely the soulmate or younger sibling of the lonely pine I photographed on my previous walk from Tealby to Normanby-le-Wold...