Even if circumstances keep you smaller than maybe you might have been, the fact that you bloom anyway brightens someone's day. #sunflower #accidentalbonsai #Wellbeing

Down, to the roots of Orkney, before islands humped their backs, when seas were coral-warm before the Gulf-stream quickened, sand and mud settled into strata, slipped skin puckered and ripples became eternity. Deep, deep time, crafted by lazy water's softest, mildest chisel.

Perfectly put, Cath. 🥰 Found a ladybird looking suspiciously cozy in a cut stalk from a vase-flower just this afternoon. 🐞

Black-white visitor unrecognised, scruffy in tricky light through hazel-leaves. Then, a hopping twist, underfeathers ablaze on a backlit tail crooked bracket-like beneath the feeder: the shape of a long-absent friend, strong beak and sticky tongue rounding up loose peanuts.

Much as it be slipperier than a scallop's eyeball, #TalkLikeAPirateDay hasn't slipped the mind o' some in Orkney's wild and windswept isles - best ye be lendin' ears to the tellin' o' John Gow, pirate o' those parts... A tot o' rum to Orkney Library for this fine crabline... 🏴‍☠️🦜