Cat’s tails, rat’s tails, tall tales – the mice will play while the cat’s away. Bring on The Jubilee, run up the flag and let’s see which way the wind is blowing. Red is hard to find at the moment.
Continuing The Jubilee theme, here we have the ‘flowers’ of a grass that is standing waist high on the verges along our route. As you can see the seed heads vary in colour from a pale blueish, to a rusty red and then on to a dry white. I always thought they were called rat’s tails but when I looked them up the best match I can find between Google’s picture and my photo is with the Meadow Foxtail. The nice thing about the Meadow Foxtail is that it should be flowering about now, Google says it is one of our earliest flowering grasses.
The colours of the flowers may not be that vibrant – but they are the nearest thing we have to red so far. White, of course, we still have plenty of. Blue in various shades is not so easy to find (now the blue bells have gone) but it’s there if you go looking for it. Red is a little problematical. Yellow, we have in abundance, but I’m not sure that adding yellow to the national flag would be that popular – if you’ve a nautical bent – then yellow meant you were from a port that had The Plague.
I wonder if I could talk St George into a nice, bright, clover purple?
Track and Hedge 