Water-starwort

An excellent day, starting with a morning walk with Pete, first visiting Stanground Wood, which was planted by the Woodland Trust about twenty-five years ago and is very popular with Muntjac deer. We than went across to Stanground Wash, which I photograph regularly for the Wildlife Trust. It was strictly closed to the public, as they're putting in some new ditches to help with the management of water on the site, but no-one was working so we went on anyway and had a very peaceful couple of hours, particularly as there are still no trains running from Peterborough to Ely on a Sunday! Part of my brief is to photograph their ditch management, and I found this very delicate water-starwort in a ditch restored in 2014. I suspect it is one of the slightly more unusual species, but they need to be fruiting to be sure of their identity, so I'll have to re-visit in late summer!

After coffee and home-made Bakewell tarts in the garden, we started preparing Pete's birthday meal, which had a Persian theme. Despite Chris and Lizzy rather over-toasting the almonds (easily done!) the meal was delicious - a starter of prawn, purple sprouting broccoli, feta and almond salad followed by slow roast Persian lamb with pomegranate salad, home-made flat-breads and Iranian rice with broad beans and dill. For dessert we had spiced rhubarb and pistachios over thick yoghurt. Plenty of wine was drunk, including a small bottle of Tokay, that Chris and Lizzy brought back from Hungary which was absolutely delicious. After dinner the male members of the household watched the most recent Mad Max film, but Lizzy and I retreated to bed!