Dear Readers, I am intrigued by the number of new imaginative green spaces that are springing up in Central London. Not long ago I popped in to see the roof garden at Fenchurch Street , and I was most impressed. However, I have been hearing great things about the roof garden at Canary Wharf. and so on a wet day earlier this week I took the Jubilee Line to Docklands, and popped in for a look.

The garden is part of the Crossrail (now the Elizabeth Line) station, a project which, as we know, is well behind schedule. When completed, the trains will arrive on Level Four of the station, below the shops and restaurants and the garden. The architecture is typical of its designer Norman Foster and Partners, who was responsible for the Great Court at the British Museum and the new Kings Cross Station. What is particularly interesting however is that large sections of the roof  of the garden are open to the elements (you can see an aerial photograph here. I had a chat with the gardeners who told me that this makes it quite a challenging space, with very differing levels of moisture and humidity. However, it looked absolutely splendid when I was there.

The planting design is based around the kinds of plants that would originally have arrived in the docks, either as food plants or as ‘stowaways’ – there is sugar cane and banana, tea, coffee and black pepper.  The garden is  divided in two, with plants from the east on one side of the main path, and plants from the west on the other. This could make for a right old jumble, but actually it is a lovely place to stroll through, and the plants are in excellent condition.

Rodgersia, palms and ferns

Bottlebrush plant

I was pleasantly surprised at how quiet it was at 10 a.m., though the gardeners told me that it is rammed at lunchtime. There are restaurants at either end, and a performance space called Giant Robot. There is a space for cookery lessons, and it was advertising sessions on Cuban and Persian food. By the time I left there were lots of London Mums from a dozen different cultures, walking their toddlers along the paths. It is a surprisingly child-friendly space, with lifts and escalators taking you down to very swish toilets with bright red glass doors.

But what is so lovely about this place is that, unlike more enclosed spaces, it is full of birdsong – the full-throated warbling of a blackbird, and the bell-like chimes of a flock of goldfinches, feeding on the seeds of the American Sweet Gum tree.

I loved the tree ferns too, such imposing plants.

There is some fine bamboo in a variety of greens and yellows.

And the roof frames some very unusual views of all the glass and steel buildings that surround the garden.

The calls of gulls can be heard too, and I watched one herring gull harassing a crow – gulls nest on some of the flat roofs and rafts in the old docks, and can recognise trouble when they see it.

So my advice is to go to the gardens early, avoid lunchtime and the evenings if you want a quieter experience, but do go and have a look. I suspect that it will be very attractive when some of the leaves change colour later in the year, and I have rarely seen a garden where the plants are so well looked-after. And who knows what other animals will move in? I saw several bees and hoverflies, all enjoying the plentiful flowers.

So, if you are in London and want to visit Crossrail Place Roof Garden I would definitely make a detour to see it. I suspect it will be much busier once Crossrail actually happens, so don’t hang around! It’s only a five minute trot from Canary Wharf Station, and you could catch the whizzy Docklands Light Railway from Bank or Tower Gateway or Stratford. Try to sit at the front to get the full ‘rollercoaster’ experience.

I have always thought of Docklands as being a soulless realm of men in suits, but it really is developing, finally, into something else. I  was pleasantly surprised by how much fun it was, and by the variety of people who were enjoying it. London never ceases to surprise me.

Lily-of-the-valley(Convallaria majalis)

Dear Readers, I have found such comfort lately in the scent of lily-of-the-valley. One day, while I was wandering in Dorchester and trying to decide what to do after a visit to Dad in the nursing home, I found a tiny garden behind St Peter’s Church. I sat on a wall in a tucked-away corner, and the perfume from these small, shy flowers wafted up and distracted me from my sadness. There is something about some smells that can restore us to the here and now and fill us with a kind of ecstasy. No wonder many religious orders use incense to heighten the senses, though for me honeysuckle or rose would do just as nicely.

And one of the things that I found when I was clearing out Mum and Dad’s bungalow was the Bible that she carried on her wedding day, 62 years ago, and the satin bookmark hung with artificial lily-of-the-valley flowers. I note that Kate Middleton followed Mum’s example when she was married to Prince William in 2011, though she was lucky enough to be able to afford the real thing. As she was married in April, well before the plant’s normal flowering time, I imagine they were greenhouse grown.

The Bible that Mum carried at her wedding, complete with lily-of-the-valley flowers

Mum and Dad on their wedding day, 21st September 1957

William and Kate’s wedding (Photo One)

Some people find that lily-of-the-valley sets up home in their gardens and is impossible to get rid of – the plant spreads by rhizomes and each colony is clonal, though it does also set seed. It is a native in the UK and across Europe and Asia, and there is even a colony in the Eastern United States, though its origins are open to question. Richard Mabey notes that in the south and east of the UK it favours ancient woodlands on sandy, acidic soils, whereas in the west and north it grows in limestone woods. Wherever it grows it likes shade, and so you would think it would do well in my garden, but, so far, not a bit of it. I shall have to have another go this autumn.

The lily of the valley which grows in St Leonard’s Forest near Horsham is said to have sprung up from the blood of a dragon killed by St Leonard, so maybe this is what my garden is lacking: both a dragon and a saint to come and deal with it.

Although in the UK peak flowering for lily-of-the-valley is in June, in France, where it is known as muguet, it is associated with May Day, and is given as a gift. My new favourite read, Roy Vickery’s Folk Flora, has this story:

“…..during the Second World War, when her home in Bignor, Sussex, was being used as a ‘secret house’ for French Resistance workers, Barbara Bertram recalled that amongst the embarrassing number of presents that the workers brought, perhaps the one she valued most was a bunch of lily of the valley which she found on her breakfast plate one May Day:

‘They had been picked in France the night before, following the charming French habit of giving Our Lady’s Tears on the first of her month’ (Vickery’s Folk Flora pg 423)”

The flower is also worn by participants in the annual Furry Dance in Helston, Cornwall. Gentlemen wear it the right way up, on the left, while ladies wear it upside down, on the right. It is worn by dancers, bandsmen, officials and by those who are ‘Helston-born’. I note from the film here that the bandsmen also often tuck it into their hats, no doubt to keep it out of the way of trombones and French horns.

However, Vickery also points out that lily of the valley is one of those plants that it is considered fatal to bring into the house. There are so many plants that apparently cause destruction on crossing the threshold that it’s a wonder that we ever put anything into a vase. However, lily of the valley is poisonous, so those innocent-looking waxy flowers and the red berries that follow them do need to be treated with a modicum of respect. There is only one recorded case of poisoning in the UK from 1989, when a family of four ate the bulbs under the misapprehension that they were onions (something that has also happened with daffodils). The symptoms of lily of the valley poisoning are similar to those caused by digitalis from foxgloves – the heart beat slows, and heart failure can occur. To add to the fun, the plant contains saponins which can cause gastrointestinal poisoning. This didn’t go unnoticed by Walter White in Breaking Bad, where it was used as a naturally occurring poison.

All of this hasn’t prevented lily of the valley being used as a medicinal plant: with the roots used as a diuretic and the leaves as a poultice for bruises and abrasions.

The scent of lily of the valley has not gone unnoticed by perfumiers, and it was incorporated into Diorissimo, produced by Christian Dior. Dior adored the flower, and it featured on his stationary and in his garden. It is, however, very difficult to produce a perfume from the plant as it contains no essential oils, so any scents that bear its name are likely to be artificial. Although it was first created in 1956 Diorissimo, with its other notes of ylang-yland, amaryllis, boronia and jasmine, continues to be a favourite, and was apparently much loved by Diana, Princess of Wales.

Lily of the valley was associated with the Second Coming of Christ in the Christian tradition,and in the language of flowers it is said to signify the return of happiness. It certainly kicked me out of the doldrums when I spotted it last week, and it seems to be seen by most people as a most hopeful little plant. I am rather with Elizabeth Gaskell on this: in ‘Wives and Daughters’ she writes that:

“I would far rather have two or three lilies of the valley gathered for me by a person I like, than the most expensive bouquet that could be bought!”

And so, to a poem. Well, two poems actually. One is so disconcerting that I wondered about including it, but I think that it is so evocative and unexpected that it’s worth a read. There’s an interesting analysis of it here.

Lily of the Valley by Melissa Stein

In the lake bodies shift
with the currents. Waterskaters
traverse their tapestries. On the bank
grow plants that no longer have names.
Some have tongues to catch the feet
of flying things. Two shoes lie
on the bank as well. A child’s shoes.
A girl’s. Can you see her, dirty dress,
dirty soles? The arms that held her?
In a convulsion of tenderness
that wasn’t tenderness. In a fever
that wasn’t fever. In this heat
the lily of the valley exudes
such sweetness a man can’t think.
All you want to do is stop up
those pealing mouths. Those white
white skirts, unutterably clean.

And, finally, back to my mother, as all roads seem to lead to her at the moment. In her youth she was a delicate, lily of the valley kind of girl, but in her later years she bloomed into someone with a love of vibrant colours, heady, blousy scents and striking textures. This poem by e.e.cummings jumped out at me. Yep, I think this is exactly what Mum’s heaven will be like.

if there are any heavens my mother will (all by herself) have
one. It will not be a pansy heaven nor
a fragile heaven of lilies-of-the-valley but
it will be a heaven of blackred roses….
& the whole garden will bow

–e.e. cummings

Photo Credits

Photo One by By The_royal_family_on_the_balcony.jpg: Magnus Dderivative work: Blofeld Dr. (talk / cont) – The_royal_family_on_the_balcony.jpg, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15064609

Tamarisk (Tamarix ramosissima)

Dear Readers, this seems to be a particularly good year for tamarisk in the UK – the tree above, spotted in a lane in Dorchester, was stunning, but there are some splendid examples in the County Roads in East Finchley as well. I have never seen a flowering plant with so many individual flowers, and according to my new wildlife gardening bible, ‘Gardening for Wildlife’ by Adrian Thomas, it is very popular with bees.A single flower can produce thousands of tiny seeds, each one adorned with a mini-mohican of hairs to aid in dispersal. This profligacy has made it a problem in some parts of the world, as we shall see.

Also known as salt cedar, the name ‘tamarisk’ encompasses a genus of about 60 species of plants. They all come from the drier parts of Eurasia and Africa, and the name ‘tamarisk’ might come from the Tamaris river in Spain. They are extremely salt-tolerant, and hence are often seen in the coastal areas of southern England, where they are used as windbreaks and for their prettiness. The RHS website suggests cutting them back hard after flowering, so that they don’t become spindly and blow over in a gale.

Being desert plants, tamarisks are extremely hardy – they have long tap roots which enable them to access ground water. They can also use their salt-tolerance to diminish competition – they accumulate salt in their foliage which is then deposited in the surrounding soil, making it impossible for other plants to grow. They are also adapted to survive fires. No doubt being in an East Finchley garden is a pleasant change from the normally harsh conditions that the tamarisk is more familiar with.

Tamarisk aphylla growing in the desert in Israel (Photo One)

Tamarisk was introduced to the US in the nineteenth century as a shade tree and windbreak. In the 1930’s, during the Great Depression, it was used as a tool to fight soil erosion on the Great Plains, and it was hoped that it would be able to stabilise the soil, and prevent water loss. The photo below, of a tamarisk tree planted beside the Escalante river in Utah, was taken in 1936. I can well imagine how much people hoped that this plant would help the situation.

Tamarisk tree beside the Escalante river, Utah (Boyd Norton, circa 1936) (Public Domain)

Since then the tamarisk has taken to the desert areas of California and the southwestern US with much enthusiasm, using up the groundwater, making the soil salty and changing the habitat for native plants. There are now vast forests of tamarisk. How far they are a good or bad thing remains to be seen; ecosystems are complex, and humans often rush to change things without realising that a balance might be achieved in time without our intervention. Certainly the rush to rid the desert of tamarisk has seen some drastic measures: programmes have tended to concentrate on cutting the adult trees down and applying herbicide to the stumps. However, as we have seen, the tamarisk produces seeds with great profligacy, and also has roots that pop up everywhere, so this has proved to be something of a losing battle.

A more successful method has been the introduction of the northern tamarisk beetle (Diorhabda carinulata) which comes originally from China. It defoliates the tamarisk, and doesn’t eat anything else, so will die once the tamarisk is gone. Normally the introduction of one alien species to eat another brings all kinds of risks, but this has been tested in the Dinosaur National Monument in Utah, and seems to have been successful. Removing such a well-established species as the tamarisk will not be easy, and it remains to see what the impact of climate change and other environmental impacts will be: increased sea-flooding, for example, creates conditions that favour the plant.

Northern Tamarisk Beetle (Diorhabda carinulata) (Public Domain)

Fortunately, in the UK there are no equivalent habitats to the arid regions of the US, and so the plant has not become a major invasive here. In fact, it is a foodplant for the tamarisk plume moth (Agdistis tamaricis), a species unknown in the UK until 2007. Like all plume moths, this is an elegant and easily-overlooked creature. You can often see other species of plume moth sitting on the window panes after dark, their wings sticking out at right angles to their bodies. You are unlikely to see this particular species, however, unless you live in Jersey, as so far it hasn’t crossed the rest of the Channel.

Tamarisk plume moth (Agdistis tamaricis) (Photo Two)

Model of a composite Scythian bow (Photo Three)

Tamarisk is mentioned in both the Bible and the Quran, and is said to have been the favourite tree of the god Apollo. It is also often seen in the art of the Scythians, a nomadic people who are thought to have originated in Persia before spreading west into the Crimea, Caucasus and Balkan regions. The Scythians are thought to have used a bow made of ibex horn, sinew and the wood of the tamarisk tree: this made a weapon that was stronger, more flexible and capable of firing an arrow for much greater distances than a wooden bow. This was also the type of bow that the Amazons were depicted as using. Tamarisk wood can be used for many other purposes, including as firewood, though it should be remembered that it burns at a much higher temperature than other timber. This rather splendid statue of the goddess Isis, from the Louvre, is made of gilded tamarisk wood.

Statue of the Goddess Isis made from gilded tamarisk wood inlaid with bronze and glass, from the Louvre, Paris (Photo Four)

The tamarisk tree has featured in the art of Judaism, Islam and Christianity – Abraham was said to have planted a tamarisk tree, and in the Quran, the people of Saba were punished by having their garden transformed until it bore only ‘bitter fruits and tamarisk’ by Allah. The tree is also thought to be one possible origin for the idea of ‘manna’ falling from heaven. In some desert regions (including the Sinai), the tree is host to a mealy bug (Trabutina mannipara) which exudes large quantities of honeydew. This would quickly crystallize during the cold conditions overnight, and forms large flakes. Some people have also suggested that the resin of the tree itself could be the source of the legend, though the sugar concentration is much higher once it’s been passed through the guts of the insect, and most people now concur that it was the insect that was the source of the legend. In some countries in the Middle East ‘manna’ is still considered a delicacy.

Sadly, the UK tamarisks seem devoid of any sugar-producing insects, and we shall have to make do with them looking pretty.

Medically, tamarisk has been used for dysentery, snake bite, and as an anti-inflammatory. I can see few uses for it as food for humans, although Sue Eland’s Plant Lives mentions that North American children have eaten the flowers as ‘cedar bread’. I wonder if the salt that the tree metabolizes makes the flowers taste rather like crisps? If you’ve ever munched on any, do let me know.

The American Impressionist Guy Rose(1867 – 1925) seems to have been fascinated by the tamarisk trees that he saw while he had a scholarship in France for two years, and haunting, enigmatic images they are too.

Tamarisk Trees in Southern France (Guy Rose 1904-1912) (Photo Five)

And, of course, a poem. This is by the great Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai. We could all do with some hope at the moment, I’m sure.

Ein Yahav

 A night drive to Ein Yahav in the Arava Desert,
a drive in the rain.
 Yes, in the rain.

There I met people who grow date palms,
there I saw tamarisk trees and risk trees,
there I saw hope barbed as barbed wire.

And I said to myself: That's true, hope needs to be
like barbed wire to keep out despair,
hope must be a mine field.

Photo Credits

Photo One – no attribution CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=293521

Photo Two by Keith Tailby taken from https://www.ukmoths.org.uk/species/agdistis-tamaricis

Photo Three from http://www.atarn.org/chinese/Yanghai/Scythian_bow_ATARN.pdf

Photo Four by Gary Todd from https://www.flickr.com/photos/101561334@N08/28424255305

Photo Five from https://www.christies.com/lotfinder/Lot/guy-rose-1867-1925-tamarisk-trees-southern-5561262-details.aspx

Water Hawthorn (Aponogeton distachyos)

Dear Readers, this was one of the plants that I put into my pond when it was first created in 2011, and this is the first time that it has flowered, so I thought I would share it with you. What a strange bloom it is! At first I thought the flower was full of little black insects, but a closer look reveals that the stamens are deepest chocolate-purple. The shape of the flower is most unusual – it opens into a ‘Y’ shape which I don’t think I’ve ever seen before.  Each ‘flower’ is in fact a collection of single-petalled white flowers, each with their own set of stamens. When the flower is pollinated, it apparently bends below the surface of the water to allow the fruit to ripen. The seeds then float away from the parent plant, sink, and wait until conditions are right to develop into a new plant.

Water hawthorn comes originally from the Western Cape and Mpumalanga regions of South Africa, where it is known as waterbloometjie or ‘water floret’. It is a plant of ephemeral pools, rather than permanent ones like mine: it blooms with the autumn rains, and becomes dormant when the pond dries up in summer. Water hawthorn species store all the water and nutrients that they need to survive in their dry tubers, but this means that they are rather easy to dig up in the dry season: one related Thai species, Aponogeton crispus, was nearly driven to extinction when it was ‘harvested’ in this way for aquariums, and is now protected. All the plant books advise the gardener not to assume that the plant has died when it disappears, but I did think that mine might put in an appearance more often than every eight years. However, I guess the conditions in the pond are finally to its liking, and maybe it will be a bit less shy from now on.

The flowers are said to be highly-scented, but I must say that I haven’t noticed so far: maybe the temperature needs to climb a bit to bring out the fragrance. I have heard the perfume described as like ‘vanilla’ (lovely) or, more likely, like hawthorn (something of an acquired ‘taste’). It was brought to Europe in the eighteenth century, and has since naturalised in some places in the UK and France. Further afield, it can be found growing wild in California and in Australia. It is mentioned as a potential problem in my ‘Field Guide to Invasive Plants and Animals in Britain’ by Olaf Booy, Max Wade and Helen Roy, but the authors grudgingly admit that the plant doesn’t appear to spread much by itself without human help. In this it varies from other water plants which are really making an impact on UK waterways, such as parrot’s feather (Myriophyllum aquaticum) and floating pennywort (Hydrocotyle ranunculoides), both of which were popular pond plants and have since become a real menace, choking out every other plant.

As with many ‘invasive’ plants, one solution is to eat them, and the buds and new flowers of water hawthorn are eaten in South Africa in a stew, usually with lamb.If you fancy having a bash (and with only three flowers this year I won’t be joining you), there’s a recipe here. There are also some rather mouth-watering photos here, where the waterblommetjies bredie is described as tasting ‘like a combination of winter and spring’. I love the way that this website gives me a world tour every week.

Tinned water hawthorn flowers (Photo One)

The recipe for the stew, called waterbloometjie bredie in Afrikaans, came originally from the Khoikhoi people of the Cape. They were a nomadic people who maintained large herds of Nguni or South African cattle, a breed specially adapted to the highveld area. The cows have a characteristic black nose, and were bred in a variety of colours to provide uniforms for the different regiments of the army of King Shaka of the Zulus. The king’s personal guard wore the pure white hides of the cattle from the king’s herd.

Nguni or South African Cattle (Photo Two)

But as usual, I digress. The Aponogeton family has 56 species, in Africa, Australia and Asia, all of them pond plants. So far only the water hawthorn has become popular as a garden plant, but there are several species from Madagascar currently in cultivation, including the rather beautiful Aponogeton madagascariensis or Madagascar laceleaf. I just hope that the revenues from the sale of this plant will help the populations of that extraordinary country. Several species are also cited as being good for aquariums.

Madagascar laceleaf (Aponogeton madagascariensis) (Public Domain)

Now, in the hunt for a poem about this plant I decided to go with its Afrikaans name. And here, for your delectation, is a lovely combination of image and words from the website Haiku Out of Africa by Liz Bard.

But I also loved this splendid piece from the BBC, which explores the whole history of the waterbloometjie bredie and the way that the plant is so entangled in the culture of the Cape. The photos are wonderful, and I shall look at my water hawthorn not just as a delight to the eye, but as a little exemplar of African history right here in East Finchley

BBC – A South African comfort food born from a pond

Photo Credits

Photo One by By Genet at German Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12146974

Photo Two by By Justinjerez, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10347636

The photo adorning Bugwoman’s first ever blogpost

Dear Readers, it hardly seems possible but five years ago, in February 2014, I started Bugwoman’s Adventures in London following a most excellent course run by the Gentle Author, whose masterwork Spitalfields Life has been published every single day since August 2009. One of the Gentle Author’s most helpful rules was to establish exactly what you were going to do as a blogger, and to make this public. And so, on my page, I wrote the following:

‘Bug Woman is a slightly scruffy middle-aged woman who enjoys nothing more than finding a large spider in the bathroom. She plans to spend the next five years exploring the parks, woods and pavements within a half-mile radius of her North London home, and reporting on the animals, plants and people that she finds there. She will also be paying close attention to the creatures that turn up in the garden and the house. She promises to post every week on a Saturday, and more often if she can tear herself away from the marmalade making. She looks forward to finding out what’s happening in your half-mile.’

Well, I have kind of kept that promise. I have certainly posted every Saturday, and indeed every Wednesday with the Wednesday Weed. To start with I was strictly local. I shared Coldfall Wood, and Cherry Tree Wood, and then there was the saga of the foxes who lived in the cemetery.

What I could not have anticipated was how my ‘half-mile’ was going to spread to encompass Canada, Austria, Monterey Bay, Costa Rica, and  Milborne St Andrew, where my parents lived until very recently.

Humpback breaching in Monterey Bay (Photo courtesy of Peter Dunn)

Nor could I have anticipated how my subject matter was going to spread. To start with, it was very strictly the birds and the bees and the weeds. Here, for example, is a link to my very first blogpost.  At that point, I thought that it was all going to be about the writing, and that the photos were secondary. Later, I rediscovered my love of marrying image to text. I sometimes think of this blog as the equivalent of the nature table that I looked after when I was at school, a rather magpie-ish collection of things that I’ve found interesting, and hope that the reader will too.

Once, when I was desperate for subject matter (and I feel that I underestimated the pressure that a blog creates), I did a post on the foster cats that I used to look after. It remains one of my most popular posts, to my chagrin.

Hamlet

However, it was this post from 2016 that really changed the focus of the blog. My mother and father had come to stay with us for Christmas. While she was here, Mum became ill with a chest infection that developed into  sepsis, and she nearly died. It was one of the worst times of my life, and it brought home to me what a solace the natural world can be during these times. It isn’t just that it provides beauty and distraction and in doing so it pulls us back into the present moment – it also provides much-needed perspective. Nature carries on doing her thing regardless of our worries and troubles. Strangely enough, I find that very comforting.

Mum’s orchid

The next few years were full of trips to Dorset to nurse Mum and Dad through their various crises. As regular readers will know, Mum and Dad both went into a nursing home last year, and Mum died in December. Throughout this period my walks around the village were a constant source of relief and inspiration. Last summer I remember standing under a lime tree that was heavy with blossom. The bees buzzed around it and the scent was enough to make me want to recline underneath and sink into slumber. For a few blissful moments I could drop everything that was weighing me down.

Lime blossom

And then, of course, there has been the Wednesday Weed. In spring and summer this has been an easy piece to write, but it has become more and more difficult in the winter. I have gradually moved on from plants that everyone would agree was a weed, to plants that are wild but desirable, to plants that are happily growing in someone’s front garden. At Christmas this year I even did a piece that I am rather proud of on brussels sprouts. I have loved finding out about the plants that pop up on the waste ground of East Finchley, but I fear that, after 250 ‘weeds’ I may have to expand my area of interest even further. Still, the one thing about doing a biweekly blog is that, at least twice a week, I have to go outside, open my eyes and see what’s happening. I honestly think that the process of creating the blog has kept me sane over the past few years. The combination of looking and walking, taking photographs and writing is to be highly recommended to anyone who wants to try out their creative wings. And it has kept me accountable. I don’t know if people are exactly hanging on my every word, but I do suspect that some people would notice if I stopped posting, and so I feel a responsibility which has kept me going when nothing else would have done.

So, the question now is, whither Bugwoman? I shall be considering my plan for the next five years, but I would be grateful for your comments and ideas. Is there anything that you have particularly enjoyed, or would like more of? Does anything stick in your memory? I would quite like to expand my writing to include some of the nature books that have inspired me or piqued my interest. Part of me wants to have some more expeditions to interesting places in London and beyond, but part of me also wants to root back down into the very local. Part of me wants to deepen and research my pieces more thoroughly, while another part loves the broad brush stroke, the overview. Whatever I decide, I can bet that the next five years will throw up opportunities and challenges that I can’t even imagine at the moment. Thank you all for coming along for the ride so far, and I look forward to your company as we gallop into the future.

A cucumber spider (Arienella curcubita)

Mum and Dad on their wedding day 61 years ago

Dear Readers I have been thinking a lot, lately, about the last things. During this past year I have watched so many things fall away from my parents, but these  events are rarely marked because we don’t realise that they are final at the time The last time that Dad was able to do the Guardian Quick Crossword. The last time that Mum was able to enjoy solid food. The last time that Mum could walk, or go to the toilet on her own, or enjoy ‘Strictly Come Dancing’. The last time that she said my name.

When I last reported on Mum and Dad’s progress, they had just moved into a nursing home, and Mum in particular was raging about what she considered her incarceration. It was a dreadful time. We didn’t have the care in place to send her home, and she was so ill that no amount of care would have been enough, but she was determined not to settle at the nursing home. On one occasion she called the police to get her out. She fought with the staff about everything from taking her medication to having a bath.

It is no exaggeration to say that I was in despair, though I was also secretly proud of her. She has a long tradition of being defiant. If there was a complaint to be made at a restaurant, or if an unfortunate scammer rang up to try to get her credit card details, she was ready for the challenge. One man who insisted that he was from Sky Television and wanted Mum to divulge her bank account number ended up calling Mum a ‘very nasty woman’ and putting the phone down in high dudgeon. Given her track record, there was no way that my mother was going ‘gently into that good night’.

Gradually, she got to know some of the nurses and to accept care from them. But it wasn’t long before Mum was sick again. She has an ailment called a pseudo-blockage, in which the whole of her digestive system comes to a halt, causing nausea, stomach pain and bloating. Sometimes this is a result of another disease such as cancer, or diverticulitis, or Parkinson’s disease, and sometimes it’s just a result of old age. Mum had five days in hospital, at the end of which time the hospital said that they could do nothing more for her, and that she was too frail for any investigative tests. She was sent back to the nursing home, and I went to visit her.

I saw one of the carers who had previously tried to look after Mum when she was at her feistiest.

‘She’s like a different woman’, said the carer. ‘She’s totally prepared to let me look after her now’.

‘Is that a good thing?’ I asked.

The carer squinted and considered.

‘No, ‘ she said. ‘Probably not’.

I went in to see Mum. Her head was bent to one side like a bud on a stalk. She was complaining about a head ache, and said that her arm hurt, and her neck hurt.

The nurse gave her some oral morphine. They were planning to use a morphine patch if Mum’s condition came back, which the hospital had assured them it would. And so, without even noticing, we were now into palliative care, which treats the symptoms of the severely ill whilst recognising that they will never get better.

Mum was still fairly lucid, but she was in pain. The doses of oral morphine came closer and closer together. There was talk of a patch that released morphine into the blood stream.

At one point, Mum opened her eyes and said

‘Someone is helping me’.

‘Who, Mum?’ I asked. I wondered if it was her mother, dead at 64 years old of a heart attack.

‘I don’t know’, said Mum, and closed her eyes again.

When I left Mum, I said ‘I love you’, as I always do.

‘I love you’, she said, and then, as I got to the door, ‘I love you’, again.

On Monday I get a call telling me that the pseudo-blockage has come back, that Mum is in increasing pain and that they are going to start Mum on a syringe driver that releases a regular amount of morphine directly into her bloodstream. The nurse tells me that this usually indicates that we are talking about weeks of life left, not months. It could even be days, though it’s difficult to say for sure.

On Wednesday I jumped onto the train to go to Dorchester to spend a few hours with Mum.

Mum hasn’t really eaten solid food since mid-July, and her face is returning to the planes and angles that it had when she was a young woman. Her skin is stretched thin over her cheekbones, and her cat-green eyes have a kind of febrile light, when they are open. Her mouth has fallen in and the nursing staff are using big, lemon-scented cottonbuds impregnated with glycerine to keep her lips and tongue from cracking. They wash her, and offer her milk which is the only food left that she can tolerate. They are like handmaidens caring for an elderly priestess. There is something stately about Mum now, something ancient as if carved out of stone.

At first, Mum is groaning, and Dad is trying to interpret the noises that she is making. The nurses come in to replace her morphine syringe and gradually the groaning stops. When Dad goes for lunch, I have a chance to sit and hold Mum’s hand.  I see her take three or four breaths and then pause for what seems an interminable time before taking the next one. I can  see the vibration of her labouring heart beneath her nightshirt.

People talk about a dying person ‘letting go’ or ‘giving up’, but it seems to me that what is going on is a tussle between the different parts of person, with some systems closing down and others wanting to hang on. It is complicated, this business, and different for everyone. It seems like hard, private work.

It is surprisingly quiet in the room – no nurses, no television, just the sound of birds in the tree outside. I tell Mum that I love her, that she is surrounded by so much love. I tell her that my brother and I will look after Dad if she’s not around. I tell her that my brother and I will look after one another too.

She squeezes my hand, though it could just be a spasm.

I tell her that I’m going to feel pretty bloody silly if next time I come in, she’s running around the room.

I cry a bit. And then all is peaceful again.

A week ago, Mum said ‘I love you’.  She said it twice. These might be the last words that I ever hear from her, because I sense that she is labouring away in some place too deep for words. But whatever happens next, those words will be enough.