There would have been a lovely image of a daffodil, taken today, but flickr has hiccups…
Happy St Davids Day anyway!
Update: as flickr is feeling better:
Category: Nature
Green in leaf and bough
prunella vulgaris – selfheal
“hairy herb with erect flowering stems. Leaves oval, opposite. Flowers violet (sometimes white), in short, obling heads at the stem tips. Flowers April to July. Found in Field, woodland, wasteground, meadow and pasture habitats. perennial” – Gibbons 1992
Culpepper describes it as a small low, creeping herb and attributes it to the power of Venus. Like Bugle it is a ‘special herb for inward and outward wounds’. he also suggests its use for cleaning of external sores and ulcers, to flush green wounds and help them knit closed. Mixed with the oil of roses and anointed on the temples and forehead it was said to ‘remove the head-ach’ and mixed with honey of roses it ‘cleanses and heals all ulcers in the mouth and throat, and those also in the secret parts’.
So a cure all? A cleanse all to allow the body to heal itself, or just a pretty purple flower hiding in the grass?
So much less and yet so much more
When there is so much more to be seen we record so much less, have you noticed? Even though I’ve decided to commit more to paper (or at least virtual paper) I’m so frightened I might miss something, I daren’t look at the keyboard. In the last couple of weeks the weather has got warmer, I’ve seen blackbirds fighting over territory and Hazel catkins have opened, glowed and gone brown.
All the crocuses I planted in the garden are out and I don’t know which day they first opened. I remember I noticed it the day the first daffodil opened but I didn’t write it in the diary so I can no longer tell you when it was. The wintry hedges have been revitalised with flashes of bright green hawthorn leaves and pale ghostly blackthorn flowers. Pussy willow catkins are showing their first silver fur and my neighbours ornamental plum has turned pink and frothy seemingly overnight.
Even though I work in an office in the country with a window overlooking paddocks, drive over the Malverns every morning and evening and apparently have more time than everyone else (I am employed part time) I miss things. I make it a habit to notice the world around me and yet sometimes it still spins away to appear reborn anew and different a couple of weeks later.
As I get older I find I’m not so afraid of missing seeing things; I carry a notebook and diary around with me. Now I’m just afraid of forgetting to write them down.
first ladybirds
2 and 4 spot red ladybirds seen at home.
4 spot black ladybird seen in Phocle Green (inside)