My room now: A July morning walk in the woods

Our house is a way over there in the distance. In the gently hilly background is Harting Down set in the middle of the 100 or so miles long track known as The South Downs Way. A basic tarmacadam track lined with hazel trees and wild garlic takes you to our front door and the big house as we call it further down the hill along what is known as The Borders Path and then it's just forest and wonderful walks. We used to get deer poachers sometimes at night but not for a long time now. Instead we are plagued once or perhaps twice a year by Raves kicking off in the woods..the thump thump of the music they generate keeps us awake all night ..but it doesn't happen often...

Fields of golden barley waiting to be cut.

We took the dogs out this morning for a walk in the woods...it was sheer magic. The only sound, the wind in the tree tops and birdsong. It's still July but we had a massive rain storm yesterday so for the first time in ages we put our coats on.

So tranquil and pretty. How lucky we are to have such treasure on our doorstep.

Moss growing on the tree trunks.

I should have turned the flash off as it makes it look rather disco.

Suddenly a Buddleia tree or Butterfly Bush in full flower. Not a normal woodland plant although our garden is full of them and they do tend to grown like weeds so maybe I'm mistaken. So many butterflies dipped and dived around us as we walked.

Clouds of red admiral butterflies flit from bloom to bloom although my camera

doesn't seem to have caught any.

Wild flowers and dripping trees everywhere. The dogs have all scooted off into the long grass and up the steep hill to the right. More often than not we see deer galloping through here.

I stop and stand just marvelling at how beautiful it all is.

How lovely...wild raspberries grow along the path.

Earlier in the year these Lords and Ladies berries..poisonous of course look very different! They look rather like slender pale green ladies dressed for a day at the races in huge elegant hats that could have been designed for My Fair Lady .The plant's fascinating shape and form has inspired a wide variety of names:

Jack-in-the-pulpit
Soldier-in-a-sentry-box
Bloody man's finger
'Kitty-come-down-the-lane-jump-up-and-kiss-me' (an old Kentish name).

Perhaps not surprisingly, many have rather bawdy associations.

The Hemp Agrimony, Eupatorium Cannabinum, belongs to the great Composite order of plants. It is a very handsome, tall-growing perennial, common on the banks of rivers, sides of ditches, at the base of cliffs on the seashore, and in other damp places in most parts of Britain, and throughout Europe.Although oddly it's not really damp where this grows and seems to be thriving..my own garden is full of it.