Far From the Madding Crowd: November 2014

Wednesday 5 November 2014

Sunny Posts

Lovely sunny day today, we went to Studland beach for a walk. We saw a Painted Lady butterfly, could not get a picture of it, I think it was probably in a hurry to move on to warmer climes. This Common Darter was very obliging, I was able to take close up pictures of it at different angles while he was sunning himself on the post.

My Blog

I have taken the title of my blog from Thomas Hardy's fourth novel 'Far From the Madding Crowd' which he wrote in 1874. He took his title from Thomas Gray's poem 'Elegy written in a Country Churchyard' completed in 1750. Thomas Hardy was born in Dorset where he lived for most of his life and where he based the stories in his novels. The word 'madding' means frenzied and there is a sense of freedom I get being out in the countryside and being close to nature away from the frenzied atmosphere of the towns and cities. I live in Dorset and like Thomas Hardy, it is where I have lived for most of my life, my blog is mostly about nature in Dorset. I am a member of the Dorset Wildlife Trust. I will include my garden and anything of interest about the natural world in Britain.