Sunday 15th April.

Gosh I am confused by the news, Theresa May has made the decision to go ahead on the strike on Syria's chemical centres, yet in the proliferation of news some are saying we are looking at old photos of a chemical attack.  We have, and I am talking about the Western world,  become embroiled in a terrible situation probably of our own making, never forget that.  Greed or trade pushes us into territories that we should leave well alone.  Religious conflict is a tribal affair.  If the gods had never been created would the human race be more peaceful?

Outside it is peaceful, I have been looking at some blogs written about this time of the year, blossom at Hyland House, the great trailing plumes of wistaria in May  Trying to find the blog I wrote on Pulmonaria, a plant I bought last week for the garden.....

Along with a Geranium palmatum, and a sage to replace the ones lost over the winter..... Taken from in which I note the replicate  stature of bison which struck me so strongly at the time in the British Museum.

"Once upon a time I had a garden full of the plants, used as weed check they are invaluable for covering bare earth. Anyway nondescript is perhaps the only way to describe it, but a good early flower for bees and the pollinating of fruit trees.  Apparently according to Grigson, there is a local variation in the New Forest Pulmonaria Longifolia found by John Goodyer in the 17th century.  But the official wild lungwort Pulmonaira officinalis is called Jerusalem Cowslip, Spotted Comfrey, Sage of Jerusalem, both by the way go under the common name ofAdam and Eve because of the blue and white nature of the flower. And to quote Grigson....

Often naturalized, making a pond of azure in the woods. (it likes shade)  Since the leaves have white spots, sympathetic magic made it into a medicine 'against the infirmities and ulcers of the lunge'.  Gerard also wrote that the leaves were 'used amongst pot herbes'."

What else of note, only that I make reference to the pulmonaria bee, an insect that comes as part of those threads that link each part of the natural world to each other, and which made me fork out for this book.......

The last in a series of four books, about the 'essence' to be found in everything, some call it 'phenemonology' Alexander doesn't. Or to put it in someone else's words ;)

In other words, there is a way to see how the whole is present throughout its parts, so that, in any one of the parts, the whole can be found, sometimes more clearly, sometimes less. As one finds ways to better understand the parts, so the whole to which they belong becomes better defined; in turn, this progressive clarity of the whole sheds additional light on the parts, which become yet more understandable and say more about the whole.