Brimstone

The good news today: my tooth is still in place, so my jaw hasn't yet decided to eject it.

The bad news: I still feel as though I've been kicked in the face.

Expect to be thoroughly bored by this saga before it concludes - I am already, because I hate undergoing any sort of medical treatment. I work on the principle that if I ignore things they will go away - and to be fair, most of them do - but this one should probably not have been left to its own devices for as long as it has been. So: self-inflicted wound; no sympathy expected; etc., etc.

I really wanted to go to Shropshire today, this time in search of a female Black Darter (never satisfied, some people); but I had to be at choir practice in Chipping Campden this evening, so spending the main part of the day grovelling around in a bog, with a two-hour drive either side, didn't seem like the best idea. So I was more than happy when R suggested that in the lovely weather we were enjoying (and which is forecast to end abruptly overnight) a walk around Croome might be a nice thing to do.

I'd hoped, of course, for dragons, and there were a few about, but they were either worn out and unphotogenic, or skittish and difficult to approach; I only took a few shots of them, and none that I especially like. So it was lucky that as we walked past the only flower border in the whole park, this handsome fresh Brimstone was browsing a nicely placed head of Verbena bonariensis. I was quite a distance away from him, so this was taken with the long lens, which accounts for the nicely soft bokeh.