What a right B---s up I made of it.

So Braunton was running as Lord Dowding with the Torbay Express.

I decided on Mud Lane for a change. No-one else turned up there and I was able to pick my place no trouble.

Foolishly I decided to try an alternative approach. I would not look through the eyepiece. I would hold the camera to the top of the wooden rail and take the pix when the train approached a marker along the line. 

Now it is a well-known fact that you cannot watch two places at once. Yes; As I was pressing the shutter the camera veered upwards and I had 3 pictures of the sky with the loco's funnel showing at the bottom.

However although Loco-wise the day was a failure I did get a cutting of Please note the correction. Perforate St John's Wort Hypericum perforatum   to take back and photograph. 

The flower not looking its best

Although past the opening by a few days, it was enough to show what was left of the flowers, seed heads and leaf style.

                                        The seed heads show well. 

I think I will scatter the seeds along the border and hope to get some shots of the flowers next year.

                                 The leaves show the general shape

The leaves were spotted, as the plant was on its last legs. I should not have forgotten Mud Lane as a suitable picture site for Loco Pix. I would then have seen the flower at its best.

Culpeper has this to say about St Johns Wort 

  Government and Virtues:— It is under the celestial sign Leo, and the dominion of the Sun. It may be, if you meet a Papist, he will tell you, especially if he be a lawyer, that St. John made it over to him by a letter of attorney. It is a singular wound herb; boiled in wine and drank, it heals inward hurts or bruises; made into an ointment, it open obstructions, dissolves swellings, and closes up the lips of wounds. The decoction of the herb and flowers, espe­cially of the seed, being drank in wine, with the juice of knot-grass, helps all manner of vomiting and spitting of blood, is good for those that are bitten or stung by any venomous creature, and for those that cannot make water. Two drams of the seed of St. John's Wort made into powder, and drank in a little broth, doth gently expel choler or congealed blood in the stomach. The decoction of the leaves and seeds drank somewhat warm before the fits of agues, whether they be tertains or quartans, alters the fits, and, by often using, doth take them quite away. The seed is much commended, being drank for forty days together, to help the sciatica, the falling sickness, and the palsy.

                                               Why are cows so curious?

I was observed by the beast for around five minutes as I got myself ready to take the failure of the loco pix. I suppose it's because a stranger around is always regarded as a suspicious person.