Frosted Stonecrop

These small rosettes against the flint caught my eye a few days ago and as I have nothing better to blip today ....

Stonecrop is a Sedum and grows wild, however this must be a garden variety. It was growing amongst the stones and pebbles I pick up on my wanderings and dump down in the raised flowerbed on top of the wall by the gate together with pieces of broken patterned china and clay pipe I find in the fields.

The flint may have come from the farm but we are not really flint land, that being over the hill to the south on the chalk downland. Flint appears in nodules in the chalk or limestone and is usually covered with a thin layer of white. Inside the stone is smooth and can be black, grey or brown. Archaeologists often walk the ploughed fields in limestone areas looking for worked flints from the Stone Age. Scrapers and arrowheads are sometimes found if one is lucky. In parts of Dorset and other areas flint has been used as a building material and is often placed in patterns with brick in the walls of houses.

A cold but calm day today!