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

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

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

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

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

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

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A dying thistle head is really quite a sad sight

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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.

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

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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!

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Are you feeling sorry for me yet?