This blog is slowly becoming a collection of all the walks I go on, don’t worry I have a post planned for next week about my studies, but today I wanted to share my adventure to the nearby village of Evington.

I only intended to go on a short walk today, I have a little map on my phone that shows local footpaths so I try to create little loops that won’t take me more than an hour to complete. Fortunately, I’m very bad at denying myself an adventure, especially when I saw the word Arboretum…

The Shady Lane Arboretum

An arboretum, in case you didn’t know, is an area of land specifically housing various trees and shrubs; similar to how a garden has collections of plants! Arboretums are amazing during the non-winter months as you can see the full lifecycle of the trees. In winter everything just looks a bit dead, but luckily it’s not winter yet it’s still the cosy brown months of autumn. So I put my boots on, and hit the trail.

After walking down a spooky covered path, swishing through a large (and wet) open field, and crossing a surprisingly busy road, I made it to the arboretum. As soon as I entered the gate I knew I was in a botanists dream. I knelt to the ground, not because I was in awe (although I was), but because I had seen the next new plant for my plantae…

Southern Cleavers – Galium Verrucosum

These small plants from the Rubiaceae family can be found almost everywhere in Europe and, for some reason, Michigan. In the spring these small weed looking plants grow small buds that look like warts (hence their American name) and small flowers! But in the autumn, they simply exist as cute little leavy plants.

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As I continued my walk around, I thought about how different the world looked than a few weeks ago. It used to be quite hot and everything was a bright green, now it was colder and everything had a browner tint to it. You might think me complaining, but I’m not. I love the variation we get in nature throughout the year, imagine how boring it would be if everything was bright green year round, I’d go insane! No greater testement to this than the redwood tree…

Dawn Redwood – Metasequoia Glyptostroboides

Somehow, in all my millenia of life, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a tree in the midst of such a distinct change of colour as the redwood tree. In summer these trees have bright green leaves, similar to that of a pine or fir tree, but in autumn the leaves turn a light brown and fall. Come across a redwood tree at the right time of year and you can see this change very slowly happen. The real beauty comes from seeing one of these trees from a distance where, similar to the Japanese Maple, the varying leaf colour slightly make the tree look like it’s ablaze!

Dotted around the arboretum are signs describing the wildlife one might see on a walk through the area. Whilst reading about the many native moth species, one of my favourite animals happened across me: dogs!

Buttons and Cinders were the names of the two gorgeous scottish terriers that kindly decided to shake a load of mud all over me, at least according to Sally, their owner. I’m not sure what it is about me that leads to older women telling me their entire life story, but I wouldn’t change it for the world! Sally told me all about their adoption process of the two dogs: that Cinders was supposed to be their only dog, but after a few months of her looking quite lonely they went back for her half-brother: Buttons.

Bidding adieu to the three of them, I continued my stroll through nature.

Soon enough I came to the other side of the arboretum, and continued across the road to where my map told me there was a park. First I walked through a small part of Evington village, seen as I’m trying to not focus entirely on nature, let me tell you a bit about the village of Evington.

Evington Village

The first historical record of Evington is in 1259, but most likely the village existed for a while before then. The name ‘Evington’ comes from the old english for ‘Farm of Aefa’, so most likely Aefa is the name of the person who owned the land centuries ago! For a long time the village consisted of only a main street and the church of St Deny’s, but in the early 20th century the village was adopted under the Leicester district.

The village has lots of green space, and even a cute little library! Unfortunately I came on a Sunday so I can’t check it out, but I’ll definitely be back soon to do just that.

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Eventually I came to Evington Park, a relatively large park containing playing fields, ponds, and the historical Evington House and surrounding grounds. Whilst walking through the park, I came across a peculiar looking tree and knew I had to know it’s story…

Japanese Yew – Taxus Cuspidata

Shockingly, a Japanese Yew tree is a type of Yew tree native to Japan. These trees are actually very important in the Japanese military of all things, where first rank courtiers (incredibly loyal people to the Imperial court) carried scepters made from the wood of these trees, as such the tree and rank have the same name: Ichi’i.

Japanese Yew trees are evergreen and throughout the year can grow small berries which are incredibly poisonous. What? I never said these would be fun facts, but I guess that depends on your perspective.

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Next on the tour was Evington House, the park is actually built on the old grounds of the house but a lot of the original features still remain. The house and grounds belonged to the Burnabys for most of recorded history but changed hands in the early 20th century before becoming a small hospital during WWI, and a guard platoon in WWII.

Once the war was over, the ground was bought by the Leicester Corporation and changed into a park. The garden of the house is all well maintained still, so I decided to take a seat and read a bit of my pocket-book I brought with me…

Cassie’s Book Club

Hi, welcome to a new section that will hopefully motivate me to read more called: Cassie’s book club. This week I’ve been reading a classic Agatha Christie Novel called Sad Cypress. It’s a Poirot, although I’m 75 pages in and the Belgian hasn’t even been mentioned yet, and as per usual involves a bunch of 30’s rich weirdos being suspicious. The books much more interesting than that but I don’t want to spoil too much of it.

One thing I’d love peoples opinion on because apparently it can annoy people that I do this. I tend to write little things in the margins of books I own. Just in pencil, a little thought here or there about what I’m reading. Personally I think if I read a book and it contained the thoughts of the person who read it before, it would make the reading experience much more interesting. What do you think?

I didnt manage to get much reading done as a squirrel began screaming at me. If you’ve ever heard a squirrel scream, you know that no reading can get done whilst it does. So I continued on my adventure.

The Way Home

I began moving back towards the arboretum, as it was nearing 16:00 and at this time of year means it will be pitch black soon enough. I took a different route back though hoping to see some new things, and soon enough I came across another historical place, called ‘Piggy’s Hollow’…

Piggy’s Hollow

Girl, I love it, who comes up with the name’s for these. Anyway, according to the placards nearby, Piggy’s Hollow is the site of a medieval moat apparently built for a manor house in the 13th century. It’s mostly overgrown now but excavation work has revealed the general shape and depth of the site. I’ve got a picture to the right that shows the curvature of the land where the moat exists, hopefully you can see it as I can.

Additionally, in my research I found this picture of the area and where the moat was, my picture above was taken from just to the West of the church so I was looking at the Eastern part of the moat, how cool!

My route continued, I now knew the route back as I had come. It began to get dark so I didn’t want to stop for any plants however tantalising they might have been. As a final part of this post, I wanted to do one more plant analysis, one I can’t believe I haven’t done before…

Grass

Grass is pretty much everywhere. Look out the window or to the ground near you, I bet there’s some grass. Grass is fascinating though, because it does absolutely everything! Oats, barley, sugar cane, and bamboo are all technically types of grass. Cows, Sheep, Deer, Mice, and a whole manner of insects have grass as their main food type. Grass is also commonly used as a biofuel, building material, and decoration!

I spend a lot of these blog posts showing you all the cool plants I see on my adventures, but truly one of the most incredible plants is consistently right underneath our feet. The day I stop being impressed by grass is the day this Earth stops turning.

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I made it home just as the last bit of daylight disappeared over the horizon. Another excellent adventure, and one I will definitely be doing again.

As mentioned, I’ll hopefully have a post next week about my studying progress, but if I’m honest this is sort of becoming a nature blog, whoops!

Until the next adventure!

Cassie