Persian Silk Tree (Albizia julibrissin)

Dear Readers, I was so taken with this tree that I spotted during my visit to Dulwich at the weekend that I thought I’d find out a bit more about it. The plant was originally imported to Europe from the Caspian Hyrcanian Forest in Iran by Florentine  nobleman Filippo degli Albizzi, who gave the genus its Latin name. This area of forest is also home to several other rare London street trees, such as the Caucasian  Wingnut and the Persian Ironwood. Persian Silk Tree is also native to the area east from Azerbaijan through to China and Korea.

In the UK this is still a rare and unusual street tree, but in ‘London’s Street Trees’ Paul Wood speculates that, like Buddleia, this is a tree that could ‘jump over the fence’ and become a pest, as it has in the US, where it’s a ‘weed of concern’. But for now, this is a truly stunning tree when in flower. Furthermore, the leaves close when it rains (hah!) or as night falls. When we were growing up we had a ‘sensitive plant’, which would collapse if it was touched, which happened rather too often for the poor thing. In the end it gave up doing anything at all, as if on strike. I suspect it was a member of of this or a related plant family.

To celebrate this habit of the Persian Silk tree, its Persian name means ‘night sleeper’, while the Japanese name means ‘sleeping tree’.

Silk tree by day and night (Photo By Abubiju – Own work, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=49213798)

Pretty as it is, the Persian Silk Tree is not loved by everybody: a North Carolina plant website describes it as ‘aggressive, high-maintenance and short-lived’. In the States, the suggestion is to plant sterile cultivars, such as ‘Summer Chocolate’. There are no such problems here, yet, but as the climate changes all bets are off. The flowers are popular with insect pollinators and some birds, and some butterflies, such as the Three-spot Grass Yellow shown below,  use it as a food plant for their caterpillars.

Three-Spot Grass Yellow laying its eggs on Persian Silk Tree (Photo By © 2010 Jee & Rani Nature Photography (License: CC BY-SA 4.0), CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18449483)

‘Summer Chocolate’ Persian Silk Tree, Virginia, USA (Photo Famartin, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons)

The flowers and bark of the tree are used in Traditional Chinese Medicine as a mood booster and nerve tonic. Seeing the tree in Dulwich certainly cheered me up, it’s such a show stopper. Who would have guessed that this plant is a member of the bean family (Fabaceae)? Well, I guess I would have done once I’d seen the pods.

The wood of the Persian Silk Tree is light but not particularly durable, according to The Wood Database, so it’s normally used for small craft and art projects.

Persian Silk Wood (Photo from https://www.wood-database.com/mimosa/)

In spite of its beany heritage, the seeds of the Persian Silk Tree are poisonous, so having them on toast is a no-no. The young leaves are said to be edible boiled, but honestly, haven’t the leaves got enough to do, what with drooping every night and reviving every morning? Maybe stick to the spinach 🙂

In Chinese folklore, the Persian Silk Tree’s name is translated as ‘ joy of togetherness’ – the story goes that a devoted Chinese queen searched endlessly for her husband, a fallen Emperor – when she couldn’t find him, she died of a broken heart, but the two of them are fused together forever in the flowers of the tree.

I also loved this touching story from Mandana Boushee. Her mother died in January 2018 in Iran, mine in December 2018 in Dorset, and yet the words she’s written could apply to my mother too.

Photo by Steve Guttman at https://www.flickr.com/photos/steveguttman/2769514474

Confusingly, the Persian Silk Tree is also known as Mimosa, though to me, Mimosa is this yellow-flowered plant. There’s no doubt about which plant is referred to in this poem, though, by American poet Kathe L. Palka. I love how closely observed it is, and the sense of sadness that I share when a tree is dying. See what you think.

Mimosa in the Yard
by
Kathe L. Palka

At thirty feet,
testament to the first owner’s
exotic tastes,
it died this year,
trunk cracked and bug infested.
A few limbs leafed out
in late spring, withered yellow
then bare by mid July.

In its prime it offered shade well placed,
I’d watch
the boys play in its cool
embrace as I cooked meals.
Yet,
it’s not the respite from the sun,
the pink fuzz of summer
alive with butterflies
or
the seed pods shaken
like maracas in October
that I’ll miss,
but the way the leaves closed up
each night at sunset before it slept.

Wisteria in flower in mid August

Dear Readers, this hot, dry weather is having a number of interesting and worrying effects on plants – here in North London there’s early leaf drop, the usual bark-shedding from London Plane, and a number of Japanese Maples  are already turning red. But seeing this Wisteria in flower really did give me pause. It’s already flowered beautifully back in April, and here it is, flowering again.

The same Wisteria in April 2023

We know that plants in the UK are generally flowering earlier (see here) as a result of warming temperatures but the second flowering of perennials is usually due to stress. In this year’s  drought conditions we may see many shrubs and trees flowering for a second time: this is a recognised phenomenon, and seems to mean that the plants are recognising at some chemical level that they are threatened, and are rushing to reproduce while they still can. It’s known that dying trees can sometimes produce one last bounty of blossom and fruit, and while these plants might not be actually dying, they are  recognising a threat. It may also be that this is a last throw of the dice for the plants before they move into dormancy – plants often ‘close down’ when there are drought conditions, to conserve their remaining energy.

Annuals, such as marigolds, will usually flower as quickly as they can, produce seed and then die. Interestingly though, the few annuals that I’ve seen in flower are from the daisy family – there are bare lawns with tiny, stunted daisies, groundsel or nipplewort. You have to love these tiny, tenacious titans of the plant world.

So, Readers, what have you noticed in your gardens? I’d love to see the RHS do a survey on the effects of this year, as it might give us all an idea on what to plant that is more likely to survive. I read an article recently suggesting that sticking in lots of Mediterranean plants won’t help if we have a warm, wet winter, which seems to be the trend. Sigh.

Classic Rolls Royce cars parked in Dulwich Village

Well Readers, as an East/North Londoner it’s always a bit daunting crossing the river, especially when one has to catch an actual train instead of a tube. But here we are in Dulwich, for a trip to the Dulwich Picture Gallery. We’re here to see their current exhibition of American photographs (highly recommended by the way), but I keep getting distracted. How about this tree, for example?

Persian Silk Tree (Albizia julibrissin)

It’s not until I noticed the ‘beans’ that I remembered that this tree is actually a member of the Bean family (Fabaceae). It’s also known as Mimosa, although for me that name refers to the yellow-flowered tree that grows on one of the County Roads. As a Fellow of the Linnean Society, all I can say is ‘thank heavens for binomial nomenclature’.

Dulwich really is very posh. There are nice cafes everywhere, and everyone looks very well-groomed and put-together. No doubt this isn’t the case for everyone, but I imagine it’s a very nice place to live if you can afford it. It’s also home to a number of famous private schools, such as Dulwich College and Alleyn’s School. Alleyn’s was named for Edward Alleyn, the Elizabethan actor – in his time, he was ranked second only to Richard Burbage,  though Alleyn was most famous for his roles in the plays of Christopher Marlowe, such as Dr Faustus and Tamberlaine. This last role involved dashing his brains out on the bars of the cage that held him captive, which must have been quite something to behold. He set up ‘ The College of God’s Gift’ in Dulwich, which owned most of the land in the area, and which turned into the private colleges. There’s a rather nice statue of him in front of the Old College.

Edward Alleyn and William Allen Sculpture By Louise Simson

Dulwich Picture Gallery is the oldest public art gallery in England – it was designed by Sir John Soane, and has an extraordinary collection of paintings, by everyone from Constable and Gainsborough through Veronese and Fragonard.

Main Gallery (Photo By Bridgeman at German Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7681629)

It also has a very nice caff (important for when your feet are swelling on a  hot day) and a sculpture garden outside. I rather liked this sculpture, by Laura Ford: it’s a response to Marino Marini’s sculpture ‘The Angel of the City’, a very grandiose, masculine piece. I love the sense of ‘My Little Pony’ in Ford’s sculpture, plus the sense of stalemate rather than victory. See what you think.

Laura Ford, ‘My Little Marini’

Marino Marini, ‘The Angel of the City’

The stones in the photo below were left behind when a Finnish glacier melted, more than 10,000 years ago – they’re known as ‘Glacial Erratics’. What a great phrase! Sculptor Peter Randall-Page has preserved the stones’ original shapes, but has added a ‘meandering’ pattern, which echoes the frieze on the Picture Gallery. The sculpture is called ‘Walking The Dog I, II and III’

This piece is called ‘Waking Matter’ and uses ‘surplus’ Carrera marble from Italy – it’s by Amy Stephens. You are invited to walk under it, which fills me with some trepidation I must say. It looks a little too like a guillotine to me.

Anyway, we had a lovely time ‘south of the river’, and, indeed, we were so impressed with the exhibition that I’ve signed us up as Friends – the next exhibition is the Hokusai ‘Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji’ which I managed to miss when it was at the British Museum recently, so it felt as if it might be worth it. If you’re in the area (or even if you’re not) do pop in. I can recommend the vanilla doughnuts in the cafe too.

Dear Readers, I’ve been keeping a close eye on our toothless, fourteen year-old, recently adopted cat during the many, many heatwaves that we’ve been having. It’s been bad enough being a human when the temperature comes close to a hundred degrees Fahrenheit, so I couldn’t begin to imagine what it was like to be completely covered in long fur. However, Abbie seems to like the heat for most of the time, seeking out the hottest parts of the house, and only occasionally throwing herself onto the floorboards for a cool-down.

She is a very stately lady for most of the time, but occasionally she takes it into her head to throw around a toy mouse, and then she sometimes falls asleep cuddling it.

She loves to be brushed, which is just as well – she’s had a few episodes of being sick, which I think are largely down to the hair that she’s ingested when she’s been cleaning herself. We’ve been feeding her a half and half mixture of Sheba and Digestive Sensitivity food, but today we’re moving onto just the Sensitivity stuff, which seemed a bit bland for her taste  – the first time we served it, she gave us one of those ‘what on earth is this?’ looks and walked away in disgust. Fortunately she’s eaten it all this morning, so fingers crossed.

‘What the hell is this?’

She also seems to know to the minute when it’s time for her evening feed, and fixes me with a death-stare. If that doesn’t work, she adds in a plaintive miaow, as below. Poor starved cat who nobody feeds!

Anyhow, it’s fair to say that she’s settled in nicely, though she was extremely cross on Tuesday when we shut her in a room for an hour while the cleaner was here with her scary vacuum cleaner. Upon being released, she hissed at my poor husband (who is the one that usually feeds her, by the way), and continued to hiss at him every time she saw him for twenty-four hours. However, they’re back on good terms now, so fingers crossed the rapprochement continues. She really is a very fine cat indeed.

A new carnivorous plant – the Candelabra Saxifrage (Saxifraga candelabrum) Image Zhang et al

Dear Readers, when I think about carnivorous plants my mind goes to Venus Flytraps and Sundews and Pitcher Plants. What they share is that they live in low nutrient environments, such as bogs, or are epiphytes, so they grow on other plants without parasitising them. However, increasingly scientists are looking at alpine plants, particularly saxifrages,  to see if they get some of their food by trapping insects, a train of thought that has a history dating back to none other than Charles Darwin himself. The soil in alpine regions is often thin and lacking in nutrients, and so this is another area where ‘eating’ insects might be useful for the plants.

Darwin had long observed that some plants had sticky leaves which seemed to trap insects, and he wondered if the plants gained any benefit from this. He took  two species of Saxifrage which had those sticky leaves – Pyrenean Saxifrage (Saxifraga umbrosa ) and Round-leaved Saxifrage (Saxifraga rotundifolia,) and dipped their leaves into  infusions of raw meat and solutions of ammonia, to see if the leaves would absorb them. Darwin observed that the colour of the cells in the leaves changed and they became more turgid, showing that they’d taken up the fluids. From this, he deduced that some plants, without being completely carnivorous, were able to utilise insects as a source of nutrients, and that this was much more widespread throughout the plant kingdom than had previously been thought. However, the technology at the time wasn’t able to  prove Darwin’s hunch.

This week, experiments on the Candelabra Saxifrage (Saxifraga candelabrum), a close relative of the plants Darwin was studying,  have shown that the plant does indeed catch insects and digest them. Firstly, the team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences noticed that individual plants could have up to 70 small insects trapped on their leaves and stems (larger insects, more useful for pollination, don’t get stuck).

The scientists investigated the chemicals contained in the hairs that trapped the insects, to see if they were capable of digesting the insects – they were. Then, by infusing insect prey with a nitrogen isotope, it was found that the nutrients from the digested insect were taken up by the plant. Finally, genetic analysis showed that the Saxifrage shared genes with other carnivorous plants, which controlled nutrient uptake and digestion.

Research is going forward on other saxifrages. I wonder if scientists could also have a look at the Teasel? I’ve long suspected that this plant might be able to digest the insects that fall into the ‘baths’ at the base of the leaves. And there are probably plenty more plants that can utilise nutrients from insects without being completely reliant on them. Watch this space!

The New Scientist article is here

The research paper is here.

The eclipse through a colander!

Dear Readers, it was a perfect evening for eclipse-watching on Wednesday. Lots of people headed for Hampstead Heath or Alexander Palace, or even further afield, but I really wanted to be quiet and just watch without other folk around.

As the light started to change, it lit up all the spiders’ webs on the mahonia and the lilac. I love the way that things you wouldn’t notice suddenly become visible.

But what was most interesting was that, as the light falls, four pigeons land on the gutter above my head. Firstly, feral pigeons never normally frequent the garden, but secondly, they seem to stare at the sun, as if trying to work out what’s going on. I wonder what they can see? I know pigeons can see polarised light, so I’m sure their view of the sun is very different to ours.

So, did you see the eclipse? And did you notice anything unusual?

Image by By Waterced – File:Universe_expansion-en.svg, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=142662712

After Wednesday’s eclipse, I found myself thinking about this extraordinary universe that we live in.

Singularity : a point or region of infinite mass density at which space and time are infinitely distorted by gravitational forces and which is held to be the final state of matter falling into a black hole (Merriam-Webster)

SINGULARITY
by Marie Howe

(after Stephen Hawking)

Do you sometimes want to wake up to the singularity
we once were?

so compact nobody
needed a bed, or food or money —

nobody hiding in the school bathroom
or home alone

pulling open the drawer
where the pills are kept.

For every atom belonging to me as good
Belongs to you.   Remember?

There was no   Nature.    No
them.   No tests

to determine if the elephant
grieves her calf    or if

the coral reef feels pain.    Trashed
oceans don’t speak English or Farsi or French;

would that we could wake up   to what we were
— when we were ocean    and before that

to when sky was earth, and animal was energy, and rock was
liquid and stars were space and space was not

at all — nothing

before we came to believe humans were so important
before this awful loneliness.

Can molecules recall it?
what once was?    before anything happened?

No I, no We, no one. No was
No verb      no noun
only a tiny tiny dot brimming with

is is is is is

All   everything   home

Dear Readers, since I wrote my original post about Echinacea (below) I’ve managed to obtain some for the pots in the front garden, and they are doing remarkably well – clearly they don’t mind the heat, and they are so striking that they’re impossible to ignore when staggering around with a watering can. Apparently growing the plant (also known as Coneflower, but see below) near the house can help to bring prosperity and safety, so the more the merrier.

Incidentally, this plant was formerly known as Rudbeckia, but this name is now given to another coneflower, which has yellow petals and a very prominent  dark-brown centre. Sometimes it’s difficult to keep up with nomenclature!

So, let’s see what I wrote about Echinacea back in 2019, and don’t miss the poem, I think it’s rather fab….

Echinacea purpurea

Dear Readers, this weekend I was at the Bridge Theatre, a new-ish venue founded by Nicholas Hytner, formerly head of the National Theatre. As a venue it had pluses and minuses. Pluses included plentiful ladies toilets (for once) and an auditorium with great sound and excellent sightlines. Downsides included only one hand dryer in each loo, and a cafe with very few tables – most of the seating was on those perching seats which are a trap for the unwary, or those very low three-legged stools that always make me think I should be leaning into the side of a patient, hay-munching Fresian.

However, I digress. We had some time to kill and so I dragged my husband, in the drizzle, through the gardens of Potters Fields.  A potter’s field is usually a pauper’s graveyard, and one of my favourite places in the world, Crossbones Graveyard, is nearby. However, this Potters’ Field appears to have been just that – an area where potters settled in the 17th and 18th Century. The gardens  have been designed by Piet Oudolf, one of my favourite designers – I love those drifts of prairie-style flowers and grasses. At this time of year, however, it’s mainly brown seedheads and rather sad blooms.

And, as we move into the season of the common cold, it seemed appropriate to concentrate this week on one of the plants most commonly invoked as a cure for the sniffles. Echinacea, or purple coneflower, forms part of so many cold remedies these days that I fear Holland and Barrett would go bust if it was proved not to be effective. The plant comes originally from the grasslands of eastern North America, and was used extensively by Native American peoples, though not particularly as a cold remedy: it was thought to be efficacious for the treatment of wounds, burns and insect bites. The root was chewed to alleviate toothache, and it was taken internally as an analgesic. . A specimen of the plant was sent to Thomas Jefferson by Lewis and Clark in 1805, and it was described as ‘Mad Dog Plant’, with the packing list stating that it was

‘“highly prized by the natives as an efficacious remidy in the Cases of the bite of the rattle Snake or “Mad Dog.”‘

Echinacea was also used by native peoples to treat coughs and sore throats, but this seems to have been something of a sideline. 

There have been many studies on the efficacy of echinacea, but the problem has been that they have used different parts of the plant, and often different species (there are ten species of echinacea). However, the conclusion overall from the Cochrane Review, as reported by the BBC Futures team, was that using echinacea might reduce your chance of catching a cold by between 10% and 20% if taken at the first onset of sniffles. I wrote about the common cold a while back, and the one thing that I would advocate is zinc gluconate, taken at the first inkling of a tickly throat. I always have some in the house just in case.

A potential problem with echinacea as a drug is that stimulating the immune system is not always a good thing, particularly for people with auto-immune conditions such as multiple sclerosis or rheumatoid arthritis. In the US, the National Institute for Health advises people with these illnesses not to take echinacea. In 2012 the NHS also recommended not using echinacea for children under 12, because of the small risk of a severe allergic reaction.

One thing that echinacea is definitely good for, however, is the bees and the butterflies. The plant is a member of the daisy family, and as such the ‘flower’ is composed of hundreds of tiny plantlets, some forming the petals and others forming the ‘cone’ that the plant is named for, and the flowerheads are long-lived (as those in Potters Fields prove). The flowers attract the Vanessid butterflies (red admirals, peacocks, small tortoiseshells), and many species of bee, especially bumblebees. My Gardening for Wildlife book suggests that the plant needs full sun and well-drained soil, but that it should be kept well-watered in summer. The seed heads may also attract finches and blue tits.

Peacock butterfly (Aglais io) on echinacea (Public Domain)

Painted lady (Vanessa cardui) on echinacea (Public Domain)

Incidentally, the name ‘echinacea’ comes from the some root as a plant we looked at a few weeks ago, echinops: it means ‘hedgehog’ and refers to the shape of the ‘cone’ in the middle of the flower.

There are many cultivated varieties of echinacea, some of which are trying to persuade the plant to lose its ‘shuttlecock’ appearance – the reflexed petals are seen as being to the detriment of the flower’s appearance. For me, this is one of its strong points – I rather like that pincushion look, and the way that the centre of the bloom is the star of the show. If it had ‘ordinary’ petals, wouldn’t it just look rather like any large single daisy? Stop messing about, people! The plant below is an example of an echinacea where the reflexed petals have been modified. See what you think.

Echinacea purpurea ‘Leuchstern’ (Bright Star) (Photo One)

And finally, a poem. This one is rather tangential to our subject (which is not unusual), but I was very taken by it. The photographer Alfred Stieglitz became the lover of (and eventually married) the artist Georgia O’Keefe. He was obsessed by her, and particularly her hands, taking many photos of them. The poet Barbara Rockman imagines a letter from O’Keefe to Stieglitz, in which she explains exactly who she is. I feel as if Rockman has somehow conjured the spirit of O’Keefe in these few lines. See what you think.

Hands (1919) Alfred Stieglitz (Metropolitan Museum of Art) (Public Domain)

Letter from Georgia O’Keefe to Alfred Stieglitz on Seeing His Photograph of Her Hands

By Barbara Rackman from to cleave

October 4 1919

Be calm, Alfred. No,
I am a plain woman. I rinse dishes,
pull weeds, and unleash the dogs on dirt trails.
I sleep in a narrow bed. I rise early.
These are hands that mix paint,
decipher sky. With these hands
I scratch my head at the improbable.
I twist them under my breasts in sleep.
Fisted against my stomach they fly
from my body in dream. Hands
at the tips of wings, Alfred.
How you splayed my fingers,
insisted I caress the absent forelock,
empty sockets, each stone molar,
imagining the horse’s rough tongue.
I want nothing of death, Alfred, nothing
of absence. These elegant hands cup seeds,
cut back echinacea, snip herbs for the sauce.
They tug knotted shirts from a basket, shake them
into light, clamp them to the line with bleached pins.
What can a man know of a woman’s hands?

Photo Credits

Photo One by James St John at https://www.flickr.com/photos/jsjgeology/39444960851

Dear Readers, I came across an interesting article by author Naomi Alderman last week, and it made me think about the difference that mobile phones in particular, and the internet generally, have made to our ability to concentrate. I know lots of people who don’t use their phones a lot (well done those folk) but for many of us, myself included, it’s become a kind of default activity – on the train, when I’m having a break, it’s so easy to just look at the phone. And there’s always something new and bright and shiny to attract my attention, be it the news, or social media, or yet another round of Mahjong. So I was interested by Alderman’s concept of doing a ‘couch to 5k’, not for exercising the body, but for exercising the mind, and I was also intrigued by the way the whole concept of getting back into reading has taken off. So many people feel that their lives have become much more distracted and fragmented, and that they have lost their ability to focus. I remember several articles about how the author can no longer just sink into a nice fat Victorian novel, or a complex piece of non-fiction, because their phone seems to call to them.

Alderman’s approach is interesting – she outlines three ‘tracks’, one for people who just generally want  to get back into sitting down with a book for half an hour at a time, one for people who are generally time-poor and want to use their limited spare time to read rather than doom scroll, and one for people who want to dive deeper and get back into reading seriously. Then, you build up over eight weeks, in much the same way as you would for a 5k run but without the blisters.

Phone apps are deliberately designed to be addictive, and I sometimes feel the same way that I used to when I’d ‘reward’ myself with a cigarette when I’d done something tricky, or was bored, or just had some time on my hands. But although I’m not actually doing Alderman’s course, I did decide to set myself a reading challenge this year. I used to read the Booker longlist every year – I’m not a great reader of modern fiction, so this was a real chance to catch up with what was going on. And this year, I’ve already got stuck in. I’ve read Elizabeth Strout’s ‘The Things We Never Say’ which is a moving exploration of loneliness – probably not her best book, but one of those where a few words say an awful lot. And now I’m reading ‘The Vivisectors’ – fortunately not about actual vivisection, but instead set on a strange university campus. It is very atmospheric, and from a slow start it is beginning to draw me in. As usual, the one that I most want to read (by Marlon James, who won the Booker in 2014) won’t be published until the beginning of September. I’m looking forward to the range of books that I’ll be reading, and I hope that by the end of it I’ll have weaned myself off of the phone to such an extent that I’m all I’m doing is my Duolingo and an occasional check of my Whatsapp. I’ve taken Facebook off of my phone (though I do still check Bug Woman daily) and dropped Twitter/X ages ago.

So, Readers, what do we think? Have you balanced the undoubted convenience of the mobile phone with retaining an ability to focus? And what are you reading? Do share!

Dear Readers, my trail camera has decided to go on strike, bless it: it won’t let me  change the time that it takes photos, and is currently taking them randomly, whenever it feels the urge, rather than taking them at night when it’s meant to. Maybe it’s as fed up with the hot weather as I am, poor thing.  In spite of all manner of messing about (including turning it off and on again, before anybody asks) it is still defunct.

So, I contact the people who make  it (Browning Trail Cameras) and they are very helpful.

They suggest that I not only turn it on and off again, but also that I remove the batteries and sim card, and put them back in again.

Well it was worth a try, but still no luck.

“I think you should send it to us so we can check it’ says the lovely support person.

I check the address and it’s in Birmingham, so not too bad.

I package it up and look again at the postcode. It’s not Birmingham in the West Midlands, it’s Birmingham, Alabama.

I contact the service  person again, explaining that I’m in the UK.

The service person explains that this is the global service centre and there aren’t any others, but he does understand my concerns. However, they will fix the camera (it’s in warranty, unusually for me), and send it back for free.

Turns out that even a tracked parcel to the US is cheaper than getting a new camera, plus I’d always rather get something repaired if I can, having an innate loathing of putting things in landfill. So let’s see what happens, as my little camera wings its way west. Fingers crossed they can fix it, I’ve gotten rather attached to seeing what’s going on in the garden, even if it is mainly my husband doing the watering.