Oxalis has been waiting

22°C, Sun. CA:20

Oxalis has been waiting for a few weeks. today it opened itself to the sun, recent days have not been good enough. Now it’s warm enough to put the hammock up.

Oxalis Palmifrons

The Nation is getting excited by the Olympics. Roads have signs warning of closures when the torch relay will pass through. I’m still puzzling over that one. what will actually happen when they run with it up a road. Do all the locals come out and wave flags? If so, what do they actually get out of doing that? What is their motive?

There is a Royal Jubilee next week. Work changed the half-term to straddle the bank holiday, so no extra days holiday (unlike last year). I raise this because the jubilee seems to invoke a similar reaction in the British people. On the face of it, both Jubilee and Olympics have the same problem- the obscure motive of spectators. Okay, it’s one thing to enjoy watching the course of a sporting contest unfold, but another to watch some selected elite run along the road with a torch. It’s taken me a while to figure it all out. My conclusion- don’t be misled by the crapulence of these events, it’s not the events at stake. The core of this is the  national unifying effect of patriotism.

Here I am, feeling like I’ve arrived just because I am sitting in my warm garden, by my (self dug) pond bathed in an almost ultraviolet light from this Ceanothus shrub. It’s having a good year, last season it was still sulking after I moved it to make way for the pond. Now it’s in full blue-indigo bloom.

Daily-mail man

19°C, after a fresh start, the air easily reached shorts weatherSun


Pyracanthus & Ceanothus. bought, planted and settling in.
On the walk home, spotted these growing under a hedge of conifers. What are they?

It looks like a very small horse-tail grass. Hold on, I will go to look it up.
See how dry it is, we’ve had no rain for three weeks. What we’d give to have three dry weeks during the summer holidays.
Today has been a hammock day.


Found it: Common horsetail: Equisetum Arvense. The book I have doesn’t make it clear whether it’s a plant, or a lichen/fungus. I will assume it’s a plant, though it looks like a relatively primitive one. This is going to be one to watch as it grows by a fence at a nearby school.


Man parks on grass:

It’s been a very long winter, at last the grass is growing, all bright green and a bit vulnerable, then this guy parks his 4×4 car on the grass verge opposite some empty parking bays. A passing pedestrian and I raise this with him, his excuse? He can’t fit his car in the bays because the back would stick out. My response- my car is the same length as yours and it fitted in just fine. Anyway, the argument became a little heated though not out of control. He agreed that he was bloody minded and arrogant and will park where-ever he likes.
The photo above shows him shouting at me that it’s illegal to take a photo of someone without asking permission first. I said “nonsense, there is no such law”  and then took another photo. He said: how would you like it if I took photos of you? A: Doesn’t matter, I’m in a public place etc.
By now I was annoyed, I really scraped the bottom of the barrel and accusingly “are you a Daily Mail reader? (Yes it got that bad).
He didn’t deny it.
I still wonder where that idea about permissions comes from- it certainly doesn’t come from British law.