23/06/2011

Lovage for lunch.

We've got lots and lots of lovage in garden. More than we know what to do with.
Today we've chopped it into a salad for a great celery like flavour.
If you want to know more about lovage, how to grow and use it, you'l find lots of information about lovage and lovage recipes here.
I feel that lovage is the sort of thing Dorothy Wordsworth would have grown- a real old fashioned herb. I don't think she mentioned in in her Grasmere journals- I'll have to re read them. She certainly mentioned White Moss though.
Here's the link to the journals for readers in the U S A. Sadly Blogger doesn't offer UK Amazon links. As soon as I work out how to do it, I'll be putting links in for UK readers.

22/06/2011

The trouble with adsense when writing about wildlife.

Writing about bats in my first post on this new blog, I then find that all the adsense ads are about how to get rid of said lovely little things as if they were not wanted.

We must take care of our protected species. Do your worst adsense!

The most amusing bat event in retrospect was when some guests went to sleep with the light on, windows and curtains open, and rang at 3 am to say they had a b...t in the room. There's no way you can persuade a b....t to leave a room at 3am if it wants to be there, so we just moved the guests to another room , which luckily we had free. The guests were Americans- is that relevant? Anyway, they didn't make a fuss- I think we could all agree that none of us enjoyed being woken at 3am, but if you will go to sleep in the country side with your lights on a windows open, you're asking for trouble.

Life in a Wordsworth House- this house has seen lots of things during its 280 years.....follow my new blog for more exciting events!!!!!

Baby bats pay us a visit.

Living in the countryside in a old house, you get used to living with wildlife all around you. Sometimes you see the wild creatures, sometimes you hear them , and sometimes you just know they've visited, like when the deer have munched through your favourite flowers.

We have pipistrelle bats living in the eaves at White Moss House. These are the smallest, most common British bats. When you see them flying around in the evening, the bats look like birds, swallow like and pretty. At this time of year there are baby bats around, and every year we find the babies straying indoors.The baby bats are only a few inches long. They look like a leaf on the carpet, then closer examination show they are live!

Last year we rang the local bat experts to find out what to do for the best. He advised carefully taking the baby bats outside and positioning them in a crevice near to where the bast fly. We've now done this twice in the last few days. Let's hope that little battlings found their mums.