Garden pests come in all shapes, sizes and colours

9 days in Italy
9 days of unattended garden
9 days of weeds and pests not having a holiday but instead having a lets-proliferate-and-create-merry-havoc party:

thistles in an unkempt bed

bindweed entangling a geranium

nettle - aaaalways nettle in our big bed

and ground elder carpet-colonising the ground.

However, not all pests are of the photosynthesizing, we-have-vacuoles-in-our-cells variety. Some are squishy, stripy, perpetually ravenous machines (I wonder what these will pupate into).

Others make the leaves contort and curl

But if there was a prize for most-pesty-pest in the garden, pests-weddy and pests-creepy-crawly would face fierce competition from pests-hairy -

apples ... nom-nom

red-currants ... nom-nom

geraniums ... nom-nom

weeds ... nom-nom

... Hmm - the nom-nom of weeds perhaps places them a rung or two down the ladder of pestiest-pest.

I think the weeds win. They always do.

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Colour, Delacroix, flochetage and why don't we all have a go at inventing words

Yes - it is a real word. Flochetage. Well, a real-ish word. One invented by the painter Delacroix, when he found the dictionary cupboard bare and required a word to describe his technique of layering different coloured paints, using lightly pulled brush strokes to create texture and pattern and thereby enhance his base-layer colours (... lost? - stick around, read on and all will become clear. Or perhaps muddier ...). Flochetage implies both stringiness and threadiness. Apparently. And it sounds good - in a filling-the-mouth-with-sound sort of a way. Try it ... flochetaaaage. Not that I speak French. So I am probably mis-pronouncing it. Nor am I an artist. So what do I know about painting techniques - except that I think this one works. What I do like is the concept - you invent a new technique in whatever it is you do, hunt around for the vocabulary to describe it, find the dictionary is lacking, so make up a word of your own and announce to the world what it means. Delacroix isn...

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Walking The Dog

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