Thursday, August 18, 2011

Thursday 18th August

~ A misty, dewy morning and for the first time for ages I wandered around the garden with the camera before breakfast.  The swallows, I counted twenty-two at one sitting, were lined up preening and chuntering on the wires, and the garden was festooned with beaded spiders' webs, which an hour later had all but disappeared, evaporated with the mist.

~ Molly and I went out a little later in the morning to pick blackberries.  We didn't get too many, but I came back with a few scratches and nettle stings, and my sandals (not good footwear for foraging really) and the bottom of my trousers wet and seedy, so something of the job description of blackberrying was fulfilled.

~ Photo:


Snailtrack, also early this morning.

9 comments:

The Crow said...

What kind of snail leaves dots like that, Lucy? It looks as if it walks on two feet instead of sliding aling on one pod.

I have only slugs in my yard and they leave one continuous silvery trail behind.

The Crow said...

Uh...never mind. (She writes, blushing foolishly.) I am guessing you marked the trail in a photo editing program?

Still, I liked the idea that France has two-podded snails walking the countryside in a John-Wayne like strut.

herhimnbryn said...

You have a snail track like an Australian aboriginal dream painting.
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Rouchswalwe said...

Are you teasing us?

the polish chick said...

oh come ON! i want snails to leave tracks like that! that's the kind of world i want to inhabit. please?

Lucy said...

Friends, would I trick you?

No this is really what it looked like. Now I will have to do extensive research on the movement patterns of snails (which it most likely was, we have more of those than slugs) and their slime-secreting mechanisms.

My guess would be that in fact snails move somewhat differently from slugs, and undulate their way along rather like inch-worms, depositing a blob of slime* at a time. This variation of movement is probably quite subtle and fairly imperceptible normally, but the trail, like the spiders' webs, was in the process of evaporating, or evanescing, or whatever snailtrail does, so only the heavier areas of deposit remained visible.

Does this convince you of my genuineness in this matter? I shall try to find a link to substantiate my hypothesis.

* a momentary typo caused me to make that 'a blog of slime', ho hum...

zephyr said...

maybe your snail meanders on tip toes?

Rouchswalwe said...

This could be one of those ale-swilling snails leaving behind blobs of beer foam ... . .. . . .

earlybird said...

LOVE the snail track! I shall have to pay closer attention to mine after the next rains.