Budleigh Past and Present

This spectacular photo of a male specimen of the silver-studded blue butterfly (Plebeius argus) was taken by Olaf Leillinger An area of the East Budleigh Common which shows good habitat for the butterfly A mating pair A female (brown) All the above photos relate to an article by Jean Turner at http://www.devonmuseums.net/Blues-for-the-Blues/Latest-News/Fairlynch-Museum/Museum-News/

Well, the work on my logpile - or rather logpiles, because as I said at http://budleighbrewsterunited.blogspot.co m/2011/08/my-blog-gets-chop.html I think it's going to be another Arctic or Antarctic winter - is almost done. And as the logging drew to a close I felt the blogger mysteriously stirring within me, especially after Tobias Kaye's talk to the Friends of Fairlynch in Budleigh Salterton's Peter Hall last night. So it was once again to the keyboard with thoughts inspired by the sight and sound of those curious-looking wooden sounding bowls, an array of which Tobias had brought with him to illustrate his talk. I'd been asked to give the vote of thanks, perhaps because the talks organiser had been so impressed by the thought of my splitting all those logs and the sight of my beautifully stacked timber that she thought I must have an affinity with wood. It's true that there's an art to building a decent logpile, and the act is a sensuous experience as you