Whilst walking around the village last week I spotted some long, white, trumpet- shaped flowers in one of the gardens.

These turned out to be Thorn apple blooms, or to give them their Latin name, Datura stramonium, and the whole plant is extremely poisonous. Its fruit is a spiny, green egg-shaped capsule some 5cms in length.

After a conversation with the owner of the garden, he wore gloves to put the whole plant, including the roots, into a plastic bag and then into the dustbin. Never toss them onto the compost heap.

There are plenty of hawthorn berries on the hedges now. Known as Haws, these red berries are winter food for thrushes, blackbirds and waxwings. I made a gallon of wine from haws once and the least said about the taste, the better.

On a recent visit to Pensilva, I walked around the two playing fields and found several mushrooms of the Amanita species – I was not sure which one – growing alongside the hedge. This row of Amanitas was more than 100 metres long and below ground their mycelium – the fungi’s thin, threadlike and almost invisible roots – stretched that distance.

In America, these ‘roots’ of the Armillaria mellea mushroom cover almost 30 acres of forest and are thousands of years old. So, not only the biggest, but also the oldest living thing on Earth.

Also on the football pitch and on the front lawn of Millennium House, I found some field mushrooms with their white caps and stems and pink gills. The fungi season has arrived.

At last I was able to photograph a lizard that was sunbathing on a patch of dry leaves.

I have seen several this year but all I ended up with were four pictures of different lizards tails because they all seem to be camera shy.

However, the latest I saw was happy to pose for a minute.

Down by the River Tiddy, there are hundreds of Himalayan balsam or Policeman’s helmets lining the river banks.

Their flowers are usually purple but can be pink, red or plain white and their seed pods have a unique way of spreading their seeds.

They have a catapult attached to each capsule which sends the seeds up to ten metres when touched by a bird, animal or even a photographer that brushes up against the plant.

Last week I went in to turn the kitchen light off before going to bed when I noticed a hornet looking in the window. I got my camera to photograph it but it travelled across and sat on the outside wall.

However, in the morning it was still there and was about 40mm long with an evil-looking head so I took its picture and left it alone – best not to get too familiar with it I thought, as the sting in its tail is even more devilish.