The wonders of thistles!

Having done battle with thistles for weeks and weeks and weeks it gave me an enormous amount of pleasure to spend an hour in the garden to photograph a few still remaining on the other 4 acres of land.  There have been times when I have hated these pesky things but when you get close up and personal you can come to appreciate all that a thistle is.

Here’s the results of my thistle photography study.

I love the way that the house is there, but not there, in the background.  This is just to prove that this are thistles from Domestic Executive HQ.

The real thing – close up and personal!

This is what happened when I got even closer with my zoom lens

I like the way that this thistle is still tangled with other grass and weeds

Here’s a visitor to a thistle.  Hmm, me thinks this little chap is fertilising ready for the thistle to produce lots of seed.

And then it ends up as one of these that lands on a blade of grass

We’ve been dispersing lots of thistle seed – when you have a pile as big as ours there’s no avoiding it

In their own way even the thistle seed heads are rather attractive – fluffy yet menacing in their power to disperse

A dying thistle head is really quite a sad sight

But don’t be deceived by these looks.  Thistles spread zillions of seeds and for every seed head that blow you’ll get seven years of more thistles.  What a depressing thought.

But if you think thistles are bad, here’s the next pest I’ve got in my sights.

Yes, there is no keeping a gorse bush from regrowth.  Darn it.  That means more spraying, more harvesting.  More prickles, more burning.  Ah well, that’s the draw back being a landowner in the middle of the country I guess.

Here’s a closer look of the next challenge!

Are you feeling sorry for me yet?