What St Patrick Missed

He forgot to get the girl...

Weeds and Wild Flowers again

Alice Oswald's new book with Jessica Greenman is a series of imaginings of plants as people. Because she's a gardener with long experience of weeds and wild flowers, many of these plants are intrusive, a nuisance, an aberration from the strict economy of gardening. The same is the case with many of the plant poems here: the people they imagine are often eccentric failures, people who have not succeeded in life and lead embittered, marginal existences. The plants on Greenman's etchings do not observe any decorum either, they sprawl untidily across the page in a natural abundance.

Weeds and Wild Flowers

Trees, etc

   Three weeks ago, some fierce winds seared the new growth on oaks, hawthorns and limes; fine weather this weekend has allowed the trees to recover somewhat. 

   A reed bunting is feeding a brood just ten metres from the kitchen window. A sedge warbler pair is established in the bramble patch. Our pair of willow warblers have fledged their young. And yesterday evening we watched the pheasant pair with very young chicks, about ten, in the grass and dock plants in the horse field.

   Hot weather is also silage weather, so the whole place is busy with tractor noise.

   Butterflies are also doing well. A big movement of painted lady butterflies went through from Friday onwards. Now, four days later, there are still lots of them about.   

   As the mind and hopes stretch forward to summer, things get left behind: the hawthorn blossom has peaked by now, and many of the trees look spent.