Category: Nature

The cherry blossom

It may not last long, especially as the weather will be cold and there’s a fair wind, but the cherry blossom is looking wonderful. This evening as the sun went down it looked beautiful against the yew hedge, with the sun shining through it.

I grew up about 80 miles north of here and the cherry blossom in our garden used always to be out for my brother’s birthday in early May… are we really a few weeks ahead these days?

Magnificent morning

Good Friday and no work. No need to get up early. So why did I wake at 6:30 and find it impossible to get back to sleep? Typical.

Anyhoo because of the early morning and the lack of anyone else being up I had an hour of two of solitude and saw the sun side-lighting the magnolia against the backdrop of new silver birch leaves which was something special.

I nipped out in my slippers to snap it and noticed a few degrees of frost… the top of my car was white, across the driveway. However the magnolia seems to have been spared, perhaps in part due to the place I planted it, fairly close to the house, in the more sheltered front garden, rather than in the wind exposed back garden. I noticed several creamy white magnolias with browned flowers as we travelled about the county today.

The early promise of a beautiful day faded to grey skies and a cold wind. Who knows what tomorrow brings?

Frost and sunshine

Today was beautifully lit by Spring sunlight which quickly melted through the sharp frost which had whitened the grass.

This afternoon I went into Oxford, stopping on the way to pick some pussy-willow on an impulse as they caught my eye, back-lit in the lane.

I parked in St Giles and walked into town which looked wonderful.

Here the forsythia simply glows with the light. I wonder if the cyclist realised the colour match when parking? Continue reading “Frost and sunshine”

The magnolia’s nearly out

Yesterday was so warm after lunch.
There is so much to do in the garden.
I should really have been out there weeding and seeding. Instead I sat in the recliner and listened to a rather good play on the radio then read for a while, before a long walk with a friend and her excitable lab. All wonderful in the beautiful Spring sunshine!

I thought I’d better make the most of it all, just in case these few days will be our ‘early Summer.’

Euphorbia

Continue reading “The magnolia’s nearly out”

Panaceas and placebos are not PC

British patriots among us will recall that Lady Sarah Ferguson boasted of using royal jelly (by mouth) to facilitate conception, while even today a North Korean mother of triplets sings the praises of honey potions prescribed for her by the late, lamented Kim Jong-Il – akshully very ill by all acccounts.

But unmoved by these historically reliable accounts of the power of patent medicines, canny Chinese bosses plan to ban all such products from being promoted as ‘miraculous’. In fact China’s State Food and Drug Administration will outlaw words it classes as “vulgar or linked with superstition, such as: sex, God, immortal,” from the names of health products”.

Which strikes me as a bit harsh. I mean the Chinese seem to believe in the power of feng shui, tai chi and i ching, not to mention the application of needles in unmentionable places – so what’s so dangerous about ginseng, horny goat weed and a few enchanted pills from the local quack?

Remember, Confucius he say, “A little bit of what you fancy always does you good, innit?”