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?