Dear Readers, since lockdown started in 2020 I reckon I’ve had at least ten Zoom calls per week for work, which makes nearly a thousand calls in the past two years. Good heavens! There are so many decisions to make about what works as a background when making these calls.  I certainly can’t show the ziggurat of tumbling books and papers that is actually behind me, for fear that I’ll look like a slattern, but on the other hand I don’t want to just blur it all because it looks as if I have something to hide (which I do, clearly, but the rest of the organisation doesn’t need to know that).

And so I turn to the natural world to give me a picture to stick my head in front of. But again, what works? You don’t want to be upstaged by a cute fox looking over your head, or, worse, have its ears sticking out on either side of your face like some peculiar furry outgrowths. It wouldn’t do to be distracted from the serious business of budgets and forecasts, after all.

Delightful but much too distracting

Landscapes are always good, especially if peaceful…

…but they’re also a bit, well, restrained.

Howsabout this one?

or this one?

Well I like them, but they are a bit bright. I have had a favourable reaction to this one, of raywood ash trees in the cemetery, though people are sometimes a little freaked out by the gravestones.

This one is suitably moody…excellent if the budget is running short and there’s that awkward 5% of a project manager to pay for….

And this one is good for a project where time is passing and nothing’s getting done so we might need an extension….

And then there’s this one, which is just, well, beautiful. Plus if I lean a little to the right I can give myself a halo.

But just recently, the one that always gets the comments, and which people seem to love, is this one. In fact, if I swap it for something more seasonal, like my snowdrops, everyone complains. So I suppose that rainbows are an enduring delight for everyone, and a sign of hope. And who doesn’t need both those things?

Double Rainbow over East Finchley

Dear Readers, I have a great love for the poems of W. B. Yeats – someone once said that a poem was all about finding the perfect phrase and then, like a jeweller, tapping the other words in around it. For me, there is a sense of balance in the words of his poems, as if each word is perfect and there was no other choice. I especially like this poem ‘Long-Legged Fly’, because of its spaciousness, and the way that each stanza conjures a clear image, with so much left unsaid.

However, Mr Yeats was not an entomologist, because I strongly suspect that his Long-legged Fly’ was not at all a fly, but a pondskater, which is a bug. I forgive him all the same.

Long-Legged Fly
W.B. Yeats

That civilisation may not sink,
Its great battle lost,
Quiet the dog, tether the pony
To a distant post.
Our master Caesar is in the tent
Where the maps are spread,
His eyes fixed upon nothing,
A hand upon his head.

Like a long-legged fly upon the stream
His mind moves upon silence.

That the topless towers be burnt
And men recall that face,
Move most gently if move you must
In this lonely place.
She thinks, part woman, three parts a child,
That nobody looks; her feet
Practise a tinker shuffle
Picked up on the street.

Like a long-legged fly upon the stream
Her mind moves upon silence.

That girls at puberty may find
The first Adam in their thought,
Shut the door of the Pope’s chapel,
Keep those children out.
There on that scaffolding reclines
Michael Angelo.
With no more sound than the mice make
His hand moves to and fro.

Like a long-legged fly upon the stream
His mind moves upon silence.

Dear Readers, firstly thanks so much for all the help and advice and good wishes after yesterday’s post – I am feeling much better today, though a little weak and wobbly, and in need of a Victorian bath chair and a lady companion to take me out for a bracing walk along a seafront somewhere. Alas, there is no seafront in East Finchley and a grave lack of bath chairs, so instead I went for a little walk in the garden.

An invalid in a Victorian Bath Chair – photo taken by Arthur James of Louth from Lincolnshire and found on http://www.19thcenturyphotos.com/An-invalid-in-a-bath-chair-126559.htm

And the snowdrops are so wonderful this year. I don’t know if I’ve finally done something right, or if they just take their own sweet time to get established, but I have a positive thicket of them right under the whitebeam, where they draw the eye every time I look out of the kitchen window. They are almost too white, and I always have to turn the brightness down on my camera to prevent them from flaring. It’s as if each one has its own halo, and maybe it does.

I love that little kiss of green on the petals too. In fact, the more I look at the flowers, the more they remind me of a rabbit, with those long ears and two front teeth. Or maybe I’ve just been indoors for too long.

I am wondering if I should take a chance and split this little bunch once they’ve flowered, or if I should just leave them alone to do their own thing. I am hesitant to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, and since I have no idea what I’ve done right this year my instinct is to leave them be for a bit longer. Or will they get too crowded? Help, gardening friends! I won’t hold you accountable if what I do is a disaster.

Goodness, they are boinging up everywhere (technical term). And they aren’t the only things. It looks as if the squirrels might not have got all my bulbs after all, though I have not the faintest idea what these are – muscari, possibly? They seemed to be less favoured by the rodents than the crocuses.

And finally, these two calendulas, a gift from my pal J, have been flowering all year, and even now, when it’s barely above freezing, they’re putting on a brave face. Is there anything more cheerful than those bright orange flowers, and if I was a lone hoverfly I’d be very glad to see them indeed.

I had a quick look in the pond too to see if there were any frogs yet, but no sign. I am determined to actually mark the first frog of spring this year, so often I get distracted and the next thing I notice is that there are about a dozen of them. Any froggy activity in your neck of the woods yet, readers? Last year I first posted about them in mid March but I mention that I saw the first one ‘about a month earlier’, so any day now. I can hardly contain myself.

‘A Woman in Bed in a Sick Room’. A woman in bed in a sick-room, attended by a physician, receiving the blessing of the Madonna del Parto. Oil painting by R. Pistoni. Votives. Contributors: R. Pistoni. Work ID: cuc43722.

Dear Readers, well it hasn’t quite come to the need for saintly blessings yet, but Bugwoman has been a bit under the weather for this last few days, and most peculiar it is too. I suspect it might be something to do with my gallbladder – roughly once a year I have a horrible spasmodic attack that means I just have to lay on my back in a cold sweat for about twenty minutes until it passes. When it first happened, about ten years ago, we actually called the ambulance because I was afraid I was having a heart attack.

And here’s just a quick aside in praise of the NHS paramedics and ambulance staff. The paramedic was at the house in less than ten minutes, and I was having an ECG before you could say ‘Jack Robinson’. The ambulance arrived shortly afterwards, though by then it was clear that I wouldn’t have to be red-lighted into hospital. What was so wonderful was that the ambulance team were fresh from delivering a baby in Waterloo Station. They were so happy – it must make such a change from all the unhappy scenes that they witness. And then they were all off, leaving me with a bit of a mystery.

I went to the GP, and the blood test results, particularly my liver function, came back as ‘deranged’. I had an ultrasound, which revealed a gallbladder full of stones. In many people these are completely asymptomatic, as mine had been for the best part of fifty years, but clearly they had been stirred into action. An MRI was done, and I spoke to the surgeon, who recommended taking my gallbladder out.

I was a little worried about this – after all, gallbladders are part of the way that the digestive system regulates itself. But I was all set to go for my keyhole surgery, so I notified the surgeon that I had had my MRI, as he’d requested, and waited for a date for the procedure from the hospital, which never came. And, as I didn’t have another attack for years, I began to think that maybe I wouldn’t go through the surgery, and that I could live with the occasional outburst.

Interestingly (to me anyway), Dad had major surgery at the Royal London Hospital for what was thought to be liver cancer, and turned out to be a gallstone the size of my thumb wedged in his bile duct. Dad was very proud of the scar, which stretched right across his ample stomach – it’s extraordinary to think that my scar would be about a twentieth of the size of his. Dad was a nightmare patient though, always standing outside the ward with a gang of other miscreants, all of them smoking and setting fire to the gases coming out of the drainage tubes in their noses.

“I looked like a bloody dragon”, said Dad when we saw him at visiting time, “And we didn’t half get a telling off from the other dragon”. Dad never did like the matron of the ward.

Anyhow, my gall bladder and I have been living together very harmoniously for the past ten years, but I have been in almost constant pain with it for the past few days (though it does seem to be settling down now). I have a theory (as I usually do). You will remember that I’ve been doing Veganuary, which finished on Monday. I started getting slight twinges as soon as I started to eat a small quantity of dairy products again. The gallbladder is all about processing fat, and I would have thought that it couldn’t distinguish between animal fat and plant-based fat (such as coconut yoghurt, which I highly recommend), but maybe it can. Anyhow, I have backed off completely on the fat, and am starting to feel a bit better. Let’s see what the next few days bring!

Gallbladder problems seem to be very underreported, and I’d be intrigued to know of your experiences. The poor old gallbladder goes about its work unnoticed most of the time, but it certainly packs a punch when it decides to make a statement.

Female striped horsefly (Tabanus lineola) by Thomas Shahan (From https://www.flickr.com/photos/opoterser/4915106328)

Dear Readers. as you will have learned earlier this week my latest passion is the world of flies, as represented so well by Erica McAlister in ‘The Secret World of Flies‘. This is an extremely diverse group, so let’s see how good we are at identifying them! I have gone for ‘popular’ flies because as McAlister points out, one in every ten species of animal is a fly, and many are very tricky to identify even for experts.

So, this is a simple match-the-name to the photo quiz, and as usual you have until 5 p.m. on Friday 11th February (UK time) to put your answers in the comments if you want to have a go. I will be announcing the results on Saturday 12th February.

So, if you think fly A is a Giant Cranefly, your answer is 1) A)

Onwards!

1. Giant Cranefly (Tipula maximus)
2. St Mark’s Fly (Bibio marci)
3. Golden Horsefly (Atylotus fulvus)
4. Banded General (Stratiomys potamida)
5. Dark-edged Beefly (Bombylius major)
6. Marmalade Hoverfly (Episyrphus balteatus)
7. Hornet Hoverfly (Volucella zonaria)
8. House Fly (Musca domestica)
9. Greenbottle  (Lucilia sericata)
10. Great Pied Hoverfly (Volucella pellucens)

A)

B)

C)

D)

E)

F)

G)

H)

I)

J)

Dear Readers, we had a full set of perfect results this week, with 12 out of 12 for Claire, Fran and Bobby Freelove and Joanna Smith (who I think might be a first-timer for the quiz, but remind me if I’m wrong, Joanna!). Well done to all of you, and I shall be trying to catch you out again tomorrow 🙂

Photos

1) H) Spring crocus (Crocus vernus)

2) F) Squill (Scilla siberica)

3) K) Wood Sorrel (Oxalis acetosella)

4) J) Oxlip (Primula elatior)

5) B) Spring snowflake (Leucojum vernum)

6) D) Winter aconite (Eranthis hyemalis)

7) A) Lesser celandine (Ranunculus ficaria)

8) G) English Bluebell (Hyacinthoides non-scripta)

9) L) Common Dog Violet (Viola riviniana)

10) I) Cowslip (Primula veris)

11) C) Snowdrop (Galanthus nivalis)

12) E) Wood anemone (Anemone nemerosa)

Photo Credits

Photo One by Franz Xaver, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Photo Two by Evelyn Simak from https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/6419558

Photo Three By © Laila Remahl 2004. – Photographer, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=736786

Photo Four by Roger Jones from https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/3945580

Photo Five by Tony Alter, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Photo Six by Martin Olsson (mnemo on en/sv wikipedia and commons, martin@minimum.se)., CC BY-SA 3.0 <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/>, via Wikimedia Commons

Photo Seven by Penny Mayes

Photo Eight by MichaelMaggs, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Photo Nine by By Stu’s Images, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14948937

Photo Ten by Björn S…, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Photo Eleven by Antje Schultner at https://www.flickr.com/photos/momentsinthenature/

Photo Twelve by Eirian Evans

The Insect Killing Tobacco Plant (Nicotiana insecticida) © Maarten Christenhusz. from https://www.kew.org/read-and-watch/insect-killer-tobacco

Dear Readers, in a break from tradition I thought that this week I’d share some of last year’s new plant discoveries with you all. I am unlikely to find any of these plants appearing in Coldfall Wood or popping up from a crack in the pavement, but they are all, in their own ways, astonishing.

First up is the insect-killing tobacco plant (Nicotiana insecticida), discovered in the Australian desert by Professor Mark W Chase. These regions are extremely arid, and haven’t been much studied because it was assumed that not much could grow there. However, Professor Chase and his team have discovered no less than 7 new species of desert tobacco plant, a difficult undertaking because many of them can remain in the soil as seeds for years until just the right conditions arise.

Nicotiana insecticida is covered in sticky glands that catch aphids, gnats and other small invertebrates. The Professor doesn’t think that Nicotiana insecticida is a truly carnivorous plant yet – the glands appear to be for defensive purposes, to protect the plant against predation. However that’s probably how many of our more familiar insect-eating plants, such as the sundew, got their start, so it would be interesting to see how things develop.

Nicotiana insecticida stem with trapped insects © Maarten Christenhusz.https://www.kew.org/read-and-watch/insect-killer-tobacco

Next up is the Star of the Forest (Didymoplexis stella-silvae),  discovered along with 16 other ‘ghost orchid’ species in Madagascar by Kew scientists Johan Hermans and Phill Cribb in collaboration with with Landy Rajaovelona and Malagasy researchers at the Kew Madagascar Conservation Centre.

The plant grows in almost complete darkness and depends on fungi for its energy (I am currently reading Merlin Sheldrake’s ‘ Entangled Life’ on the relationships between fungi and other parts of the ecosystem so this comes as no surprise). The star-like flowers only appear directly after rain, and disappear 24 hours later.

Of the 16 species discovered, 3 were already thought to have become extinct by the time the scientific paper was published, such is the speed of change in our industrialising world. One species was probably eradicated when its forest habitat was destroyed to grow geranium oil, much used by Western aromatherapists. A second species was probably lost during a climate-change driven flash flood. The third plant now only exists as a single specimen in cultivation in Europe.

Ghost orchid (Didymoplexis stella-silvae) © Johan Hermans/RBG Kew. Website https://www.kew.org/read-and-watch/top-10-species-named-2021

Five new species of Streptocarpus (Cape Primrose) were named during 2021, all discovered in the Democratic Republic of Congo. While many Streptocarpus species are popular houseplants, in the wild they are often very localised and vulnerable to habitat distruction. One species, Streptocarpus malachiticola,  is particularly threatened – it grows on malachite, which is one of the ores from which copper is mined. Global copper prices are at an all-time high, and this plant, which grows in only three locations, is assessed as Endangered by the IUCN.

Cape primrose Streptocarpus malachiticola © Julie Lebrun from https://www.kew.org/read-and-watch/top-10-species-named-2021

And finally, a plant that is very close to my heart. This one comes from the forests of Borneo, which you might remember I saw first-hand during my 60th birthday trip back in 2020 (which feels like several millenia ago). The Firework Plant (Ardisia pyrotechnica), was named by a group of Malaysian and Japanese scientists in collaboration with Kew’s Tim Utteridge. It is a spectacular plant, growing up to 4 metres tall and covered in white flowers. However, I also witnessed first-hand the size of the palm oil plantations, and the way that they seem to devour the tropical rainforest. The Firework Plant ( a member of the primrose family) has been found in only two locations, and there are only a handful of individual plants, so it has already been classified as Critically Endangered by the IUCN.

Firework flower Ardisia pyrotechnica © Shuichiro Tagane from https://www.kew.org/read-and-watch/top-10-species-named-2021

What this list really illustrates is that as fast as we’re finding plants, we’re in danger of losing them. There is no way of sweetening that bitter pill.