Recent Reading, Garden Moths and "Egg in a Nest"

Recent Reading


"The Running Hare - The Secret Life of Farmland" is superb nature writing and I think it was even better than "Meadowlands" if that is possible. John Lewis-Stempel takes over a meadow and, using traditional methods, restores it bringing back traditional wild flowers, animals and birds in the process.

Just two snippets to give you an idea of the wonderful prose:

"The design on a marbled white's wings is the full moon seen through the tracery of bare winter branches".

"The redwings are plundering the hawthorn berries, lipstick kisses in a blue sky".


Highly recommended.

Loved this 4th Vera Stanhope book - am currently reading Book No. 5!

You may remember I bought this book on Kilpeck and the Romanesque when I was at "Nature in Art". It was expensive but it was worth every penny. The book contains many paintings, drawings, prints, collages and sketchbook pages by the author of some of the medieval churches in Herefordshire and neighbouring counties. If you enjoy visiting churches or anything medieval you will love this book. All I need to do now is to persuade the family that a long weekend exploring these churches is a brilliant idea - definitely not an easy task!!!

This book contains everything you ever wanted to know about the history and development of English villages from pre-Roman times to the present day. This is a really informative book - I just wish I had the paperback rather than the Kindle version. Good as Kindles are for fiction - they don't work as well with reference books!

Thanks to Rosie from Corners of my Mind - her blog inspired me to try this author and I am glad I did. It was quite different to any novel I have read before and I shall certainly be reading the rest of the series.

The next Dr Ruth Galloway book was as unputdownable as the previous stories in the series. In fact, I am going to have to have more of a break between reading these books as I don't want the series to end!

A few weeks back I suddenly discovered "Poldark" was about to return to BBC so it was a mad panic to get the next in the series read before the programmes started. I thought this was the best Poldark novel so far. Am now racing through The Four Swans!

I once had hardbacks of all the Poldark novels in the good old days of book clubs. Regrettably, in a moment of madness I took them all the charity shop so am now having to re-buy them all for the Kindle!




Garden Moths

I haven't been putting out the moth trap so much this year but here are a few I have trapped recently.


White Ermine (Spilosoma lubricipeda)

Flame Shoulder (Ochropleura plecta)

Poplar Hawk-moth (Laothoe populi) - this is a new species for the garden and what a superb moth.

Buff Tip (Phalera bucephela)

and here in its more usual pose looking like a broken twig.

Small Square-spot (Diarsia rubi)

Mint Moth (Pyrausta aurata) - we get these in the garden a lot - they look like tiny fairies and are found among the herbs. Here it is on thyme flowers.

"Egg in a Nest"

When I was little my mother often used to serve a recipe for tea that she called "Egg in a Nest" which she served on top of cheese on toast. For years I searched for the recipe without any luck - I suspect it was one of those Jimmy Young recipes of the day. Once or twice I did try to make the dish without much success - I now know I didn't have the oven hot enough!

Recently B mentioned that one of the new "in" foods was something called Cloud Eggs. As soon as I saw a picture I realised it was what mum called "Egg in a nest". So I couldn't resist having a go.

If anyone fancies trying it (it is fairly low in calories!) then just google "Cloud Eggs". I used the recipe by Phil Vickery on ITV's "This Morning".