Today I saw a wild badger for the first time in my life. Sorry, I did not get a picture as he went underground before I could get the camera out, so instead here’s a wood carving of Badger and Otter from Wind in the Willows.

This was from the National Memorial Arboretum a few weeks ago. They have a complete set of Wind in the Willows characters that are not a memorial to anybody so far as I can tell. They are fairly random and non-matching sizes, but then the animals in WitW are sometimes human sized and sometimes animal sized based on narrative convenience. In fact if you read the text carefully Mole has to take precautions against moles digging up his front lawn.

This is what the entrance to a badger’s earth looks like.

My high school astronomical society once held a debate on the subject This House Believes The Earth Is Flat. I’n not sure whose idea that was, but it was quite possibly me. The voting was a tie after the head of the drama department argued convincingly that a badger’s den was an apartment.

The badger was in the Bishop’s Field Nature Reserve in Wolverley. I’ve visited there before, in search of the elusive Greater Tussock Sedge. I do believe I spotted on this year.

Of course, it could be a Lesser Tussock Sedge, or even just a clump of grass.

This I’m pretty sure is a yellow fieldcap, or egg yolk fungus.

Wolverley continues do do the picture postcard village thing.

I walked up to the church, St John the Baptist.

Why does this tombstone have a dollar sign on it?

Maybe it’s not really a dollar sign, just some knotwork that got a bit financial.

Inside the 18th century church they have a 14th century memorial to a knight who went off to war in Spain, was captured, thrown in jail for years, and finally returned to Wolverley still in manacles riding on a swan.

You’re probably thinking that a swan would not be able to carry a full grown knight, but the story goes that he lost a lot of weight in prison and appears to have also left his legs behind.