Actually this photo of a Lenten Rose taken in Royal Victoria park – as you’ll see from the timestamp – was taken on January 15th. There are a few others taken more recently, not least the daffodils in the window boxes, but we’ve been horribly conspired against by the weather but also another project that’s grown and grown. A splendid example of mission creep!
I mentioned several posts ago that I’m building a searchable database, pulling together the botanical parts of over 10,000 largely undocumented photos that I’ve taken over the years. Mission creep was inevitable once I’d discovered the incredible power of modern software to sort, list and interrogate thousands of data points in a few seconds. My original plan was to list all the plants I’d photographed and properly identified; hoping to reach 100 species. That number was soon exceeded and I realized that I was seeing the same plants more than once, so should I record every one or just the first time? My distressingly ill-ordered collection of random pictures was mostly filled with plants that took my eye for some reason. Consequently it’s very light on the ordinary everyday plants like Broad-leaved dock which I’d known since childhood for its capacity to cool nettle stings. But I’d actually never bothered to photograph either the nettles or the dock leaves which left a large hole in my database. This, and a problem with the EXIF data which recorded dates in an American format led to a thoroughly dodgy list when first sorted by date, and the incorrect dates which were added in bulk – had to be found and altered one at a time!
What’s an unrecorded photo called? -well completely lost is the best answer. When most professionals make a mistake, they solemnly intone the phrase “lessons will be learned” and take a quick look to make sure their pensions are still secure. When we amateurs mess up we have to start over and repair the damage with no pensions to lose. We even have to beat ourselves up for our own stupidity. It’s a tough call.
However in my case lessons really have been learned because every photo has to be checked and double checked for ID, date and location. I’ve discovered that phone grid references can be a bit wonky – some of my finds have been a mile out to sea. That too is occasionally my own fault for failing to type the correct numbers in, so now I use a suite of six separate programmes to check that I’ve got it all right. Then there’s the thorny issue of sorting the garden escapes from the ghost orchids and that means looking at the mighty databases run by the BSBI and several others to check that the plant in question grows where I’m recording it. The Book of Stace always has the last word on whether I should record or remain silent. Occasionally I find something that’s really original and there follows arm wrestling with the gate-keepers to get my record accepted. Peaceful?? you’re kidding!
Luckily I’ve got an excellent memory and so in front of me now is a database entry no 417 for Pencilled Cranesbill, Geranium versicolour. I can tell you exactly where I saw that plant because its beauty took my breath away.
So that’s all taken up hideous amounts of time and affected my postings severely. Then we’ve both had abundant hospital appointments trying to get our various ailments under control to free up the summer for fun stuff. The campervan has had an even worse year than us and we’ve had to spend a great deal on getting it back on the road. All this culminated a major service, new cam belt, new alternator and brake renewal. Our first trip away was supposed to be this weekend to celebrate the beginning of spring in the Bannau Brycheiniog – Brecon Beacons in old money; but the fates had other plans and we got less than five miles down the motorway when the speedo and then engine failed completely. Reversing downhill without power, brakes or steering back to the hard shoulder with cars and lorries passing at 70+mph was a bit hairy but we made it without causing any major problems – with the help of a friendly lorry driver and spent six hours waiting for help to arrive – during which we were clearly being seen as elderly and vulnerable because we were visited by every patrol car and traffic officer in South Wales, and phoned every half hour to make sure we were OK, Someone even offered us some space blankets! Eventually and in the dark, a recovery vehicle turned up and loaded us up for a very short journey back to where we’d set of in the springtime of our youth. We went to bed with a sandwich and slept fitfully as I planned the next stage of recovery getting the van back to the guilty garage. As the AA man said – he didn’t believe in coincidences either. Needless to say the garage took a more cautious view suggesting that the engine failure might not be anything to do with them. Harrumph says I!
Oh and just to redeem the shining hour I photographed a dock leaf today
