Nature Friday: Bertie takes care of the ferns

Welcome to the LLB Gang's Nature Friday folks.

So I came across this fern in a walk through the woods last week, and suggested to Gail that it might need watering.

After all, dehydration is always a danger, right?

Gail says "wrong", and dehydration is not in general an issue for woodland plants in December in Scotland.

But I still say the precautionary principle is always best...

And I'm off to find some more ferns to water now.

Spanish lessons

I suspected something was up when I noticed how much time Gail was spending staring as some app on her phone called Duolingo, and leafing through an ancient Spanish dictionary.

Finally today she confessed to me that she will soon be going away on a Christmas holiday to Mexico, abandoning me to spend a week at neighbour Yvonne's (OK) and then a week in 'camp' (the horror....)

Now I will say I am at least relieved Gail is making some attempt to master a few phrases in Spanish, as I suspect a combination of schoolgirl French, German learnt as an adult, some long forgotten bits of Latin and the ability to speak English loudly and slowly, might not be much help when trying to negotiate her way round Mexico City and environs with her American friend Marse.

However, I fear that Duolingo is not quite coming up to the mark in some important areas, so I have been doing some research on Google Translate, and respectfully suggest that Gail might commit to memory the following text:

 Or what about?

Or best of all?

Perhaps my friends could suggest some more useful phrases Gail might learn. She is not leaving for another week so there is time...

Casting a long shadow

Welcome to December folks! 

I bet some of you are looking at the picture above and thinking gosh, that Bertie chappie is casting a long shadow, he must be out and about on the beach in Aberdeen near sunrise or sunset.

Oh but how wrong you would be. Here at the onset of winter, at over 57ºN, this is about as good as it gets, sun-wise. The photo was taken close to midday and believe me, there is precious little warmth when the rays are coming from so low in the sky.

What sort of shadow do you cast?

(Please not that this question is a purely scientific one, and not to be answered in terms of Jungian psychoanalysis....)

FFF: Immortality?

Once again, we are delighted to be taking part in YAM-Aunty's Final Friday Fiction challenge. Our November book is 'The Great Soul of Siberia' by Sooyong Park, and on page 87 we find:

Line 8: Passing on the gene, in September even the creatures
Line 12: On Crow mountain would be good, and the wild walnut forest
Line 16: Bad either, the upstream region of Shauka River was probably

Bertie has been quite restrained this month, his piece is barely longer than the three lines from which the prompts are taken.

Bertie's Suggestion

When I have shuffled off
This canine mortal coil
You'll miss me, probably.

Passing on the genes
For perfection
Would be good, don’t you think?

So how about you have me cloned?
A snip at fifty thousand bucks these days.
Why stop at one?

Imagine a multitude of Berties,
Bringing bouncing bliss
To the many not the few.

Click here to link to the other FFF challenge entries. We can promise you an excellent read!