Dear Readers, you might remember that on Monday, my Dad was admitted to hospital with a chest infection. He was on a Covid-19 ward, waiting for his test results to come back to see if he had the virus. We were all pretty confident that the test would come back clear – Dad’s nursing home has been in lockdown for weeks – but he was very distressed at being in a strange environment. He was being given intravenous antibiotics but overnight he pulled out his canula, his catheter and anything else attaching him to a machine. As he is on blood-thinning tablets, the amount of blood was apparently impressive.

Yesterday my brother got a call that Dad was very poorly, and was now on palliative care only. This was a shock as he seemed to have been holding up pretty well. I spoke to the nurse, and asked if I needed to come now.

‘I wouldn’t leave it too long’, she said.

So, I headed down on the empty tube train to an empty Waterloo and took the three hour journey to the hospital. It wasn’t difficult to Social Distance as there was barely anyone about. In W.H. Smiths there were more staff trying to make sure that people kept six feet away from one another than there were customers. I had a carriage on the South Western Railways train to Dorchester all to my self. When I got to Dorchester it was a ghost town.

The hospital, usually so bustling, was eerily empty. I got the lift to the second floor (the ward is familiar from frequent hospital stays by Mum and Dad in the past). When I opened the lift doors, a nice young man asked me to wait because someone was being brought in by ambulance, and so we waited until a grey-faced elderly gentleman in an oxygen mask was brought in.

I went to the ward. One of the nurses intercepted me.

‘You’re aware that this is a Covid-19 ward’?

‘Yes’, I said, ‘But I think my father is dying’.

She nodded and sent me into the ‘quiet room’ to await a nurse to help me to gown up to go in to see Dad. The palliative care nurse popped in, and told me that they’d stopped all invasive procedures, were giving Dad his antibiotics when he’d take them, and were giving him small doses of Fentanyl if he seemed particularly distressed, but that he wasn’t on a morphine driver at the moment. I told her that my one big wish would be to get Dad back to his nursing home if he tested negative for the virus – I know that he would be less distressed and more relaxed in a familiar environment. She said that she would do what she could, but I wasn’t sure if she was just trying to make me feel better.

Then the nurse came to fit me with an apron, gloves and a face mask. I had no idea that the face masks were only good for about twenty minutes before you need a new one. She took me through the procedures when I was leaving the room – gloves and apron off on the ward, hands washed, come out, mask off once I was out of the room. She showed me how to pinch the mask so that it fits the face better.

And then I went in to see Dad who was, of course, out for the count, as usual.

I held his hand and told him all the things that I’d want him to know if, as seemed likely, I might never see him again. I cried into my mask which is a most unpleasant experience. His breathing was bad, but I remembered how Mum’s breathing had been in the days before she died, and his didn’t seem the same somehow. I couldn’t bear to leave him, but I had to.

Walking out of the six-bed ward, empty except for Dad, was such a hard thing to do.

One of the nurses, a strapping chap from Hull, made me a cup of tea, and asked me about Dad. It transpired that Dad had gotten very angry about being contained and had punched him in the stomach.

‘He’s still strong, your Dad. I wouldn’t write him off just yet’, said the long-suffering nurse. And when I apologised for Dad, and said it wasn’t normal for him to be violent, he just laughed.

‘All part of the job’, he said.

And that is one reason why our NHS staff deserve so much more than they currently get, in every single way.

I wondered if I could stay over in Dorchester so that I could see Dad again but, quite rightly, all the hotels and B&B’s are either closed or, like the one that I normally stay at, being used for NHS frontline staff. It seemed that it might be the last time that I ever saw Dad alive.

I caught the train back home, crying all the way, so just as well the carriage was empty.

When I looked back along the platform at Waterloo, I saw that exactly five people had gotten off the ten coach train.

And then, this morning, I heard that:

a) The Covid-19 test had come back negative

b) Dad had taken his medication

c) Dad was sitting up in bed eating his breakfast

d) The hospital were going to release him back to his nursing home today.

So, it will still be pretty much impossible to go and visit Dad until the restrictions are lifted, and he is still a very sick man, but at least he will back in familiar surroundings, with people who know him, and who have excellent palliative care skills. It is such a relief to know that he is back where he belongs. But kudos to the staff at the hospital, who have done an amazing job with someone who can be a difficult patient, and who have managed to keep him well enough to go home. I am more grateful than I can express for this reprieve, however temporary.

Dear Readers,  when I was choosing a place to visit for my sixtieth birthday it was the orang-utans of Borneo that finally made up my mind. I have spent time in the past with chimpanzees and gorillas, but have never had the opportunity to meet one of these ‘men of the forest’. So, my holiday started off with several visits to Sepilok Orang Utan Rehabilitation Centre, a 43 sq kilometre protected reserve in Sabah. This was founded in 1964 to look after orphaned orang-utans, and the need has never been greater. We shall (sadly) return to this subject over the next few days, but as you probably know, logging and palm oil production has destroyed the majority of Malaysia and Indonesia’s primary forest, and so the orang utans are left homeless. When the mother apes wander into the palm oil plantations they are often killed, and babies fetch a high price if sold to the idle rich in many countries – a man was recently apprehended at the airport with a drugged baby orang in a rattan basket. Fortunately, this little one was rehabilitated and will be released into the wild.

Sepilok has been remarkably successful at rehabilitating the baby orangs that it rescues. At first, the babies are completely cared for by humans, but once they are well they go through a programme of ‘skills training’, teaching them to climb, to identify the many different types of food that are available in the forest – each new baby is paired up with an older ‘buddy’ who teaches them the ropes. Eventually, they are released into protected forest, either at Sepilok or further afield. Visitors can only access a small part of the reserve and are confined to walkways. We are not allowed to get closer than 15 metres to any orangs that are hanging around – a Sepilok employee with a small bamboo stick will try to encourage the visitors to step back or move on, though some idiots do seem to think that their photos are more important. Generally the best views are at the feeding platforms – some food is left at these sites twice a day, so that newly released apes have a chance to supplement their diets. Apparently the food left here is deliberately monotonous, so that the orangs become bored and go elsewhere to forage.

While we were there, a wild mother brought her baby to the feeding sites. It is so moving to see the way that the baby was always in physical contact with his mum, keeping one hand entangled in her fur at all times.

A female baby will stay with her mother for about eight years, but the boys hang around for ten to twelve years – the outside world is a dangerous place for a young inexperienced male. There are no real predators of adult orang utans, apart from the odd enormous python (one that was nine metres long turned up at a logging camp), though clouded leopards will take a baby if they get a chance.

Orangs have the greatest difference in size between male and female of any ape – the big ‘flanged males’ are double the size of the females. Why has this happened? Firstly, not all males develop the typical fatty pads around their necks and throat that dominant males do – some males remain in a state of arrested development and are much less conspicuous. It’s these smaller, subordinate males that will force themselves upon  a lone female if they happen to find one. Females may prefer the big flanged males because they offer them more protection, and seem to be generally more appealing than the little guys – big males also have some unique vocalisations that they use to attract females, so maybe they are also honey-voiced seducers.

But why don’t all males develop fully? One reason probably relates to the nature of the forest that they live in. The majority of the trees there are known as dipterocarps (meaning ‘winged fruit’ – their seeds resemble those of the sycamore). These trees only fruit occasionally, sometimes every ten years, and all the trees in an area come into flower at the same time. This provides an occasional bonanza, but the rest of the time it’s slim pickings for all the animals. I suspect that the forest couldn’t support a population of orangs where all the males reached full maturity. I wasn’t lucky enough to see an adult male on this visit, but they are magnificent animals.

Dominant Bornean Orang Utan male (Photo One)

Subordinate male (Photo Two)

It was a real privilege to be able to watch these extraordinary animals at Sepilok, and we were very lucky – the reserve was closed to visitors because of Covid-19  the day after we left. I was pleased to see how carefully the staff were managing their interactions with the apes – keeping their distance and wearing proper face masks when they had to have hands-on contact with the youngest babies. Apes are extremely susceptible to our diseases, and even a coronavirus such as the common cold can be fatal for great apes – I dread to think what Covid-19 could do. I note that treks to see the mountain and lowland gorillas in Rwanda and Uganda have been suspended for a while, which is a relief. We have barely come to terms with the effect of the disease on other humans, let alone our closest relations.

Wild mother orang and baby at the nursery feeding station

Mother visiting the feeding station and spending time with her adolescent son.

Youngster just hanging around…

And I wouldn’t be Bugwoman if I wasn’t also intrigued by the insects. How about this chap?

Lantern bug

This is a true ‘bug’ of the Fulgoridae family, but although it is called a lantern bug it isn’t actually luminescent, and as far as I can see no one has worked out what the ‘nose’ is for. Still, it is a splendid insect, and apparently its mouthparts can tap directly into the sap of the tree. Very little is known about these insects, as is often the case in the tropics – there is such an abundance of species, and the habitat is so challenging, that these creatures are very under-studied. How splendid they are, though!

Malayan Owl butterfly (Neorina iowii)

And I managed to get a shot of the Malayan owl butterfly (Neorina iowii) – there were many, many beautiful butterflies and moths, but most of theme seemed to be on a mission and it was very difficult to keep up with them as they zoomed through the undergrowth. Plus, did I mention that Borneo has leeches? One wouldn’t want to career through a shrub without one’s leech socks on. Still, this butterfly, with its very pale eyespots, was most obliging. Its wings were like black-blue velvet.So, tomorrow we will remain at Sepilok, but we will leave the orang utans and make haste to see the sun bears at their rehabilitation centre just across the way. In the meantime, have an imaginary glass of Bornean ginger beer (ginger grows everywhere) and I’ll ‘see’ you soon.

Waterlily in frog pond, Tabin Wildlife Reserve, Borneo

Dear Readers, it has been a remarkable few weeks. On Friday 13th March I headed off for my big 60th birthday trip to Borneo, something that I’d been planning for over a year. At the time there were no travel advisories for Malaysia, and the main problems with Covid-19 seemed to be in China (where it was seemingly coming under control), Italy (in lockdown) and South Korea. Malaysia had a small number of cases, and Singapore, where we were heading to at the end of the trip, had the best results of any country in containing the disease. However, for the past ten days it has felt as if we are surfing just ahead of a huge wave. Singapore was closed, so that part of the trip was cancelled. Malaysia announced a lockdown, so no new tourists arrived. We were the last visitors at each place that we stayed, and the staff and guides at the lodges had no idea when they’d be able to work again after we left. Our plane home, on Sunday night, was packed with people who’d gotten stuck all over Asia. Out of 60 planes leaving from Kota Kinabalu, 56 were cancelled. I am so grateful and lucky to be home, and am also full of sadness, both for the beautiful but benighted country that I visited, and for the terrible effects of this virus. And don’t get me started on the inadequate responses of our own government.

So, I have lots of things to share with you, and I will start a daily blog from Thursday so that I can take you all with me on my Borneo adventure (minus the mosquito bites). But first, I wanted to check in with you and see how you are all doing. I know that different places are in different degrees of lockdown, but here in the UK all non-essential shops are closed along with schools, churches, and other meeting places. Physical distancing is supposed to be observed, with a 2 metre gap between people who don’t live together when in public spaces. You can go out to exercise once a day (and I’ve already had a brisk walk around Coldfall Wood, where most people seem to have got the message about keeping their distance). The police now have powers to enforce the closures and physical distancing but it will be interesting to see how that goes. The measures are supposed to be reviewed in three weeks, but realistically I expect this to last for a good few months at least. I am able to work from home, which is great, and for me I think that the key will be to get into a routine – it would be so easy to disappear into a black hole of online Covid-19 news and general nonsense. I recognise, again, how lucky I am in so many ways: I am in good health, my husband is also my best friend so we won’t be throwing things at one another as the weeks go on, and it’s easy to get to the local shops that are open for food. I am joining one of the local voluntary support groups so that I can help with shopping or picking up medications for people who are totally self-isolating, and that will help me feel connected. Plus, the garden is full of birds and the fritillaries are in bloom, so nature, as always, helps to make me feel grounded.

Bornean Daddy Long Legs spider

My biggest worry is Dad. His nursing home has been in lockdown for several weeks now, with no visitors allowed. On Sunday he developed a chest infection and was admitted to the local hospital. He is now improving, but has to await the results of a COVID-19 test, which is taking two days. This seems like a very long time to wait for test results – if Dad is getting better I suspect he doesn’t have the virus, and therefore is blocking a bed for someone who is much sicker than him. Plus, his dementia makes him extremely distressed in unfamiliar surroundings, and visitors are strictly limited. Fortunately his favourite carer from the home is going to see if there’s any way that she can get in to see him today, which will help, and hopefully he’ll test clear and be out on Wednesday. These situations always make me feel helpless, and it’s even worse when I can’t get down to see him myself.

Pig-tailed macaques in Sukau, Borneo

So, I would love to know how you’re holding up under the strain of the current situation. It’s an anxiety-provoking time for us all, and we will need one another more than ever. How are you spending your time? Are you, like me, looking at the clutter and deciding that this might be the time to make life a bit simpler? Are you able to get out into the garden or into nature? What hobbies or pastimes calm your nerves? And do you have any advice for the rest of us? We are living through a historic time, and there will be lessons to be learned that will resonate through the years to come. How we look after ourselves and one another may give us valuable information about the kind of world that we want to live in going forward.

Spiders Web, Sukau, Borneo

A wet August

Dear Readers, here is my belated report for August 2019 to January 2020. If all goes according to plan (and that’s a big ‘if’ at the moment) I will be on the other side of the world when this is published, gathering some new experiences to share with you all. But for today, let’s go back in time and celebrate the goings-on of last year. It started with a very wet and humid August, and on one morning I sat on my doorstep and watched the snails going about their business. I rather enjoyed just plonking down and taking the time to really breathe and notice. The time to do this was just about to get rather shorter, as I started work in September, but August was full of memories of coleus, and admiration of cardoons.

Autumnal red coleus

Cardoons abuzz with bees

September saw a trip to Walthamstow Wetlands, where the great crested grebes were already courting. It was a great spot for Wednesday Weeds as well, with tansy and bladder campion. And as I started work in the City, I found myself on a hunt for a green space, without much initial luck.

Courting great crested grebes at Walthamstow Wetlands

Tansy (Tanacetum vulgare)

Bladder Campion (Silene vulgaris)

The ‘garden’ on the site of St Martin Orgar church, with its artificial turf.

October saw my first ever ivy bees, in the grounds of the National Archive at Kew. I found a more promising green space in the Cleary Garden in the City, and remembered how it had been a favourite spot for Mum, too. It was in the Cleary Garden that I became enamoured of the magnificent swamp cypress, too. And, on a visit to see Dad in his nursing home, I heard about his escapades as ‘Captain Tom‘, steering a boat from Weymouth to Portland. Seeing Dad so happy and excited as he told me about the trip was one of my highlights of the year.

Ivy bee (Colletes hederae)

The memorial to Fred Cleary, who helped to found the Cleary Gardens

Swamp Cypress (Taxodium distichum)

Cones on the swamp cypress. What a wonderful tree.

Dad aka Captain Tom. One of my favourite humans

November saw a rumination on the things that Mum taught me, and all the things that I owe to her. It would have been her 84th birthday, and I am learning that as the time goes by the grief is not as all-consuming, but there are still tender spots and emotional bruises. I suspect there always will be, and in a way I’m glad. The measure of what someone meant to us is how much we miss them when they’re gone. Life continues, but is never the same again.

A cabbage with a demon trapped inside it?

I revisited the swamp cypress, and glory hallulujah, what an extraordinary sight it was.

Swamp cypress at the Cleary Garden in the City of London. My favourite tree.

There were Dutch elm disease-resistant elms planted in the heart of the City, and a lot of autumn beauty much closer to home in East Finchley.

New Horizon elms on Queen Victoria Street

Autumn in East Finchley

Autumn in East Finchley

December saw cranberries, kale, an intrepid squirrel and a visit to Dorchester to see Dad.

Cranberries (Vaccinium macrocarpon)

Curly kale (Brassica oleraceae)

Dad in his new hat, wearing his Christmas tie.

And then it was January. Work was crazy, with year end and an audit to contend with. Some of the load was taken off by the loan of a trail camera, which enabled me to see exactly what went on in the garden when I wasn’t there. I had a couple of trips to cemeteries, which always cheers me up. And it gave me a chance to ruminate on almonds, which was something that I’d never considered before. Finally, it was my sixtieth birthday, which gave me a chance to wax philosophical on all manner of things.

Night One

Night Two

Islington and St Pancras cemetery

East Finchley Cemetery

And here, for no particular reason, is a photo of the dog fox who visited every day for a few weeks back in September. He was the most confident animal, and one day I found him sitting on the wall as if he was waiting for me to turn up. He’d have gone into the house if I’d let him. He had no fear of anything, and this was his undoing, as a few weeks after this picture was taken he was run down by a car and killed. However, there are foxes around here who look a lot like him, and I would love to think that his offspring are still trotting about, although hopefully they have a little more road sense. He was much loved in the County Roads, and was as much part of the community as some of the people. Long may his genes continue.

Another handsome fox. Just because….

Eva Jospin, Foret Palatine 2019-20

I do love an exhibition that centres on the natural world, and way that artists have responded to it. ‘Among the Trees’, which just opened at the Hayward Gallery on London’s Southbank, aims to ‘bring together artworks that ask us to think about trees and forests in different ways’. I found the show a bit of a jumble of ideas, trying to cram a bit too much into a few small spaces, but there is some great stuff here, and lots of food for thought.Take Eva Jospin’s ‘Foret Palatine’ for example. The sculpture takes up an entire wall, and looks like a forest from a (rather Grimm) fairy tale. What makes it fascinating is that it is made entirely from cardboard – trees made out of trees. Few things here are exactly what they seem.

I love sculpture, and there are several interesting examples here. ‘Cold Moon’, by Ugo Rodinone, is one of a series of twelve casts of ancient trees, between 1500 and 2000 years old. This particular cast is from an olive tree, twisted and contorted by years of sun, wind and water. It’s beautiful in the way that an elderly person’s face is beautiful, shaped by the experiences of their lives.

Cold Moon (2011) Ugo Rondinone

This work is called ‘Plastic Tree II’, by Pascale Marthine Tayou, from Cameroon. The artist likes to work with the juxtaposition of natural and man-made materials, and between the living and the artificial. This is a bright and happy piece, but like several pieces here, it feels as if it misses the mark a bit – surely something so dangerous as single-use plastic shouldn’t be so joyful? Or maybe I’m just being a curmudgeon. It has been known.

I rather liked the piece below, however. It’s by the German artist Mariele Neudecker, and it’s called ‘And Then the World Changed Colour: Breathing Yellow’. The sculpture is in a tank, underwater – close up, you can see the bubbles appearing along the branches. It is lit with an unearthly queasy yellow-green light, and I felt as if I was being invited in, but that the invitation would not necessarily be to my advantage. This was something that I could have looked at for a long time. There is a sense of the ‘drowned world’ about it that seems appropriate considering the way that it doesn’t seem to have stopped raining since about October.

There are lots of paintings too, old school though they are. Here is a piece by American artist Kirsten Everberg called ‘White Birch Grove, South (After Tarkovsky). The piece was inspired by Tarkovsky’s film ‘Ivan’s Childhood’, in which the birch forest is a place of both enchantment and entrapment for young Ivan. I found the painting claustrophobic, and the longer I looked, the more human faces and eyes I was able to see. The trees feel like soldiers, or lost spirits.

The natural resilience of trees was illustrated in a series of photos taken by Zoe Leonard, of trees in New York City. The bark of these trees is growing through and around the fences that confine them, absorbing and covering the barbed wire and the mesh. The result is a scar, but an honourable one.

In another photograph by Rachel Sussman (who has a series of photos of ancient trees in the exhibition) we see an old friend: the Jomon Sugi, a Japanese Cedar estimated to be between 2000 and 7200 years old. It is interesting to see the twisted thorny twig fence, probably intended to protect the tree from the inevitable souvenir hunters.

I really liked these two paintings as well. What appears at first to be a simple depiction of a rainforest scene becomes, on closer study, an incredibly detailed depiction of the ecosystem. The artist, Abel Rodriguez, is an elder of the Nonuya people, who live on the Cahuinairi river in the Colombian Amazon.  He learned everything he knows about plants and animals from his uncle, and taught himself to draw. In the 1990’s, he and his family had to leave the region due to armed conflict, but he has continued to make images of his forest home, showing the landscape in different conditions and at different times of year.

There were also two video installations. I was intrigued by Jennifer Steinkamp’s animated trees, which sway and grow and drop their leaves in spite of being made of nothing but pixels. A whole year is compressed into three minutes, but this feels a bit like the way we’re going – artificiality and speed seem to be everything.

Jennifer Steinkamp’s Blind Eye

The exhibit that I enjoyed most, though, was the giant horizontal spruce tree depicted by Eija-Liisa Ahtila’s Horizontal-Vaakasuora. This is a real tree, and the soundtrack is full of the sounds of the wind and the chirping of birds. The decision by Ahtila to show the tree on its side was a practical one: few venues would have a room high enough to show the tree vertically. Cutting it into sections means that the tree sways in different directions and at different rates, meaning that every time you think you are watching something ‘real’, there is a disconnect and it becomes clear that you are not.

So, ‘Among the Trees’ is well worth a look, even though it is a bit of a jumble. Some have commented that it doesn’t say enough about the relationship between trees and human beings, and how that relationship has lost its way. Others have said that the exhibition feels ‘scattergun‘. For me, it feels as if someone has said ‘let’s put together a lot of varied and interesting work about trees’ without any overweening view of what those works should say. It sometimes feels as if the exhibits are shouting at one another across the gallery, but there is much to enjoy here. I could sit and watch the horizontal tree for half an hour and feel better at the end of it, for one thing.

‘Among the Trees‘ is at the Hayward Gallery until 17th May.

Giant Honey Flower (Melianthus major)

Dear Readers, I am being completely self-indulgent this week. I was so taken by this plant when I walked past it at the Business Design Centre in Islington that I had to find out some more about it. I have never seen anything quite like it: look at those flowers, which remind me of feather dusters or possibly one of the late Ken Dodd’s tickling sticks.

Statue of Ken Dodd with his tickling stick at Liverpool Lime Street station (Photo One)

Giant Honeyplant comes originally from South Africa (home to so many interesting plants) where it is known as kruidjie-roer-my-nie (herb touch me not) in Afrikaans. It is a member of the Francoaceae family, a wholly new family to me – another member of the group are the Bridal Wreathes from Chile, which are also splendid plants but are clearly not quite as extravagant as our Wednesday Weed.

Bridal Wreath (Francoa sonchifolia) (Photo Two)

Now, our plant looks fairly inoffensive sitting outside the Business Design Centre, but in South Africa it is apparently also known as ‘Smellyanthus’, for the  distinctive musky odour of the flowers. However, the crushed leaves are also said to have the perfume of salted peanut butter, which is surely a good thing? South African readers, help me out here! At least the plant doesn’t smell of liquorice which would be the end of the story as far as I’m concerned. I suspect that the cold, wet, windy weather that we’ve been having doesn’t encourage any odours, pleasant or otherwise, to reveal themselves to my poor cold nose. I shall have to have another sniff when/if summer comes.

In the UK, the plant is usually grown for its rather beautiful foliage: popular TV gardener Monty Don says that he has had a specimen for many years that has never flowered, so I don’t know how ‘my’ plants have been persuaded into bloom (probably by being raised in a greenhouse I imagine). They need lots of water but also free-draining soil (so no chance for me then), and are said to not be frost-hardy. Mr Don recommends cutting the plant back hard in early spring rather than trying to nurse them through the winter, and says that new shoots will pop up like magic.

Photo Three

In South Africa the bright red flowers are bird-pollinated, as so many blooms of this kind are. Sun birds are particularly fond of the copious nectar, and a female or juvenile bird is pictured below getting stuck in.

Southern double-collared sunbird (Cinnyris chalybeus) on giant honey flower (Photo Four)

I cannot resist showing you what the male looks like too.

Male double-collared sunbird (Photo Five)

For all this musky honey and peanut butter, however, giant honey flower is poisonous: it contains bufadienolides, named for the Bufo genus of toads (which includes our European toad, Bufo bufo). The skin of toads exudes a toxic slime which means that animals that pick up one of the amphibians in the hope of a quick meal often back off, foaming at the mouth and clawing at their jaws. The chemical in giant honey flower acts directly on the heart, causing tachycardia, or fibrillation, or a lethal heart attack. Goodness. As if this wasn’t enough, it also contains cardiac glycosides, which are also found in foxgloves (hence digitalis) and lily-of-the-valley.

However, the black nectar that is fed on by sunbirds is also feasted on by bees, and the Plants Africa website mentions that it makes good honey. The plant has also been used extensively in African traditional medicine, for abscesses and boils, sore throats and backache, painful feet and aching joints. It is also considered a cure for snake bite. Being toxic presumably means that the plant has a lot of active chemical compounds, and maybe local people have learned to harness the power of the plant. Anyone without such skills should be definitely be wary.

And finally, a poem. This is by Sean Borodale, a poet that I haven’t come across before, but I really like his work: this poem is from Bee Journal, a year in the life of an apiarist. . When I read about this honey, I think of the black nectar oozing from the flowers of Melianthus major. Although from a sunnier place, I wonder if it, too, would have a feral tang.

12th November: Winter Honey by Sean Borodale

To be honest, this is dark stuff; mud, tang
of bitter battery-tasting honey. The woods are in it.

Rot, decayed conglomerates, old garlic leaf, tongue
wretched
by dead tastes, stubborn crystal, like rock. Ingredients:

ivy, sweat, testosterone, the blood of mites. Something
human
in this flavour surely.

Had all the clamber, twist and grip
of light-starved roots, and beetle borehole dust.

Deciduous flare of dead leaf,
bright lights leached out like gypsum almost, alabaster
ghost.

Do not think this unkind, the effect is slow
and salty in the mouth. A body’s widow in her dying
year.

It is bleak with taste and like meat, gamey.

This is the offal of the flowers’ nectar.
The sleep of ancient insects runs on this.

Giant’s Causeway hexagons we smeared on buttered toast
or just the pellets gouged straight from wax to mouth.

Try this addiction:
compounds of starched-cold, lichen-grey light. What else seeps
out?

Much work, one bee, ten thousand flowers a day,
to make three teaspoons-worth of this
disconcerting
solid broth
of forest flora full of fox. Immune to wood shade now.

Photo Credits

Photo One by By Rodhullandemu – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17822845

Photo Two by By Stan Shebs, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=301268

Photo Three by By JMK – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=34476738

Photo Four by By Bernard DUPONT from FRANCE – Southern Double-collared Sunbird (Cinnyris chalibeus) female or juvenile on Honey Flower (Melianthus major), CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=56466815

Photo Five from By Mikegoulding – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10874504

How much is that doggie in the window?

Dear Readers, this week I was in Dorchester, visiting my Dad. Regular readers will know that he has vascular dementia, and that he is in a wonderful nursing home. I am grateful that I can be so confident that he is being looked after, but nonetheless I am always filled with trepidation when I go to see him, as I never know whether he will be wide awake and full of stories or out for the count. To ease my nerves before a visit, I have taken to having an early morning walk before I pop into the home. For this visit, I explored part of the ‘Walks’ and took a wander down by the land that used to be the water meadows.

But first, I spot a doggie in the window. I remember my Mum singing the song to me when I was a little girl, and so seeing this hound made me smile. He or she was less impressed when I got my camera out, however, and so I hurried on, past the ‘Top O’ The Town’ roundabout and along the ‘Walks’.

There is a statue of Thomas Hardy on the corner. You are never allowed to forget that ‘The Mayor of Casterbridge’ was set in Dorchester and indeed, in January I am lucky to get a bed in my favourite B&B because it is taken over by a professor and group of Hardy students from the US. There is a pub called Hardys, and many plaques about the town commemorating the author and his works. I rather prefer Trollope meself, but I do confess to a lasting fondness for Jude the Obscure, with its unforgettable child character ‘Little Father Time’ who murders his sibllings and himself, and leaves a message ‘Done because we are too menny’, an incident that teeters on the very edge between gothic horror and black comedy. For me anyway.

And here is a close-up of Hardy with his hat.

The walks were originally the boundary of the old Roman city of Durnovaria (and I pass the remains of a Roman town house, currently off limits to the public while some restoration work is done). During the English Civil War, the walls were fortified again: Dorchester was a hotbed of Puritanism but found it expedient to change sides several times during the conflict, earning it the title ‘the southern capital of coat turning’. However, in Victorian times the tops of the Walks were levelled and trees were planted, providing the splendid shady avenues that we see today.

There are some Victorian walls studded with the local flints, and I love the way that these so easily turn into rock gardens.

Lesser celandines nestle in the crooks of the tree roots.

And there are some lush patches of the cuckoopint that I noticed last time I was here, though still no flowers.

I cross the road and head steeply downhill towards the river Frome – this is where I finished my walk last time I was here. There is a plaque giving a bit of history about the area: the land round about was once flooded seasonally to provide a much longer season of grass, In Dorset, the water was diverted from the meadows back into the river in late February and early March so that sheep could graze. Once the sheep left, the fields were flooded again until it was time for the hay crop to be harvested, after which cows were put onto the fields again. The key factor was that the water was kept moving, so it didn’t form stagnant pools that might damage the grass, but instead encouraged it to thrive.  The pond below, known as John’s pond, was part of the system for regulating the water, but might also have been used as a sheep dip. The water from the Frome and its tributaries also powered a number of mills up and down the river. It all seems like a most sensible and sustainable way of using the natural cycles of ebb and flow to make the most of the land without destroying it. What a shame we no longer do this: only 3% of the UK’s ancient meadows survive.

John’s Pond

Hatches for diverting water out of the Frome and into John’s Pond

The ‘water meadows’, no longer routinely flooded

I stride on down the path, but as usual things start to catch my eye, and my pace slows. Look at the fresh new growth on this willow, for example.

And as I tune in, I notice birds singing heartily about every ten metres. I have not been paying attention and concluded that they were robins. Not so! These are male chaffinches, and they are vigorous songsters, belting out their message of desirability with raised crest and open bill.

Male chaffinch

I even captured a snippet of song.

I cross the Blue Bridge (built in 1877) and pause for a moment to watch the water tumble underneath. There is plenty of it: folk that I’ve spoken to say they can’t remember a winter like it, with so much rain. This, I fear, is the pattern of things for the south of England under global warming, at least as far as we can tell: wet, mild winters and hot, humid summers.

The Blue Bridge

I like this little bridge too, and the way that it makes a perfect circle with its reflection. Bridges like this were once used by horse-drawn vehicles to bring the hay in, but this seems rather too narrow for such an enterprise.

I am also training myself to focus on reflections, they can turn a churned-up muddy pathway into something rather magical.

In the field opposite there are some magnificent specimen trees, presumably spared because they provided shade for sheep or cattle in summer. Some older trees might also have provided a spot for the farmer and his team of plough animals to have a rest and eat their lunch. I love it when they’re left, although I imagine with the larger farm machinery that some people have now they can be a bit of a pain. In an online forum where I was asking about this, nearly all the respondents said that they would leave the trees in their fields because they loved to see them. There is hope, people.

And at the end of the walk I find a field full of sheep, with many of them happily resting under a tree. Maybe the roots provide a bed for animals as well as for lesser celandine.

And look at this magnificent semi-wild bed at the bottom of the lane, full of primroses and narcissi, winter heliotrope and cuckoo pint, forget-me-nots and ferns.

Back I go towards Dorchester. I meet a very nice lady who is walking her dog, and she tells me that the locals are currently fighting a plan to build 250 houses on the water meadow site. We need new homes, I know, but building them on an area which is at the confluence of three separate streams seems ludicrous in view of all the flooding that we’re currently having. Doesn’t anybody care, or is it all just about making a quick buck?

And then it’s back along the lane…...past this cut branch, which reminds me a bit of a screaming face in profile…

and back to the centre of Dorchester. When I get into the nursing home, Dad is sitting up looking very dapper. I notice that he’s very breathless, though – he has COPD, and has had one chest infection after another this year. I had been planning to take him out, but then I notice that today is Spanish Day in the home. We decide to have lunch in the home, sitting at the nice table for two looking over the gardens. Spanish music is playing, but for Dad, Spanish music can only ever be Julio Iglesias. After all, he spent more than ten years travelling to and working in Spain, so he knows what he’s on about.

‘What do you think of the music, Tom?’ asks J, one of Dad’s favourite carers. She is wearing a flower in her hair in honour of the occasion.

Dad grimaces and considers being polite, then decides against it in favour of honesty.

‘It’s a bit ropey’, he says.

‘Never mind’, says J, plonking down a bottle of white wine and bottle of red wine. ‘This’ll cheer you up’.

Dad looks at the wine.

‘Pinot grigio’, he says to me. ‘That’s not Spanish, it’s Italian’.

This dementia journey is quite a thing. Dad isn’t quite sure who I am, but he knows when he wine isn’t Spanish.

Fortunately, he likes it when it’s served, in plastic wine glasses with tops and bottoms that snap together.

‘I’m going to take that bottle back  to the room’, says Dad with a twinkle.

‘I think it’s for everyone, Dad’, I say.

‘Most of them won’t want any’, he says, looking around at the rest of the residents. He has a point. Many of them are asleep, everyone is on medication and a lot of folk gave up drinking a long time ago. Fortunately J comes round to provide a second glass and all is well.

We have soup with paprika and chickpeas and spinach, chicken with actual black olives, and. most delightful of all, a churros, though with the chocolate inside rather than for dipping. I eat the lot, and Dad makes a good fist of it.

‘They’ve put Syb in a separate room’, says Dad. Sybil was my Mum, who died in 2018. Dad hasn’t mentioned her for ages.

‘Have they, Dad?’ I ask. It’s painful when he talks about Mum like this, but for me rather than for him. I wait to see what he’ll say next.

‘And I can’t seem to find her’, he says. But then he throws his hands up in his typical gesture of stoical acceptance. ‘I’ll see her eventually’, he says. ‘But now, I need to go to the toilet’.

We walk back to his room.

‘Do you want me to wait?’ I ask.

‘No,’ he says. ‘I’m going to the toilet and then I’m going to have a rest’.

After a three-course meal and two glasses of wine, that’s how I feel too. I love that he dismisses me so gently, and that he isn’t concerned when I go. Gradually I am learning to be with this new way of being – nothing to do, no problems to fix. It’s a bit like relaxing into a hot bath, just letting go of my preconceptions and being with Dad wherever he is in the moment, joining him there. It’s a hard lesson for someone like me, who is so determined to try to control everything, but it’s a good one. I enjoy being with Dad, seeing the world through his eyes.

J told me a lovely story. Her Mum is very sick, and she had to take a few days off. When she came back to the home, the first thing that Dad asked her was ‘how’s your Mum?’ Dad has so little memory for the day to day, but he remembered that she had been distressed, and cared enough to ask. It’s so important not to make assumptions about what someone with dementia can and can’t understand. Being with Dad requires me to use all my faculties – my empathy, my imagination and my creativity – and I know that he is trying to connect and make sense of the world too. Strangely, this time with him might be the period when I most get to know the real Dad, the man that he’s been trying to cover up all these years, in all his late glory. It is a privilege to have the opportunity.

Heavenly bamboo (Nandina)

Dear Readers, I have always loved bright colours, and I come by it honestly: my Mum was always clad in shades of pink or turquoise or purple right up until the last months of her life. But she used to get very frustrated, because what she could buy was often largely dictated by what was ‘in fashion’.

‘It’s all mucky colours’ she would complain when the shops were full of camel and beige and taupe. She had a particular loathing for khaki, because it combined the attributes of ‘being green’ (an unlucky colour apparently), being militaristic (if there was one thing that Mum loathed it was an epaulette or a pair of cargo pants) and being neither green nor brown.

And what, you might ask, has this to do with heavenly bamboo? Well, there are fashions too in garden plants, and for many people, what they buy is limited to what the garden centre has in. Not everyone goes to specialist nurseries, or trusts the quality of the plants that they can buy online, and so if the garden centre is wall to wall petunias/Clematis montana/heavenly bamboo, then that is what they will have to buy.

In this past week, I have been falling over this plant in a variety of locations – in the gardens of East Finchley, in the municipal beds of Islington and in the planting at Coal Drops Yard in Kings Cross. It is undoubtedly an attractive plant, but what, I wonder, is making it so ubiquitous? And does it have any of the pitfalls of ‘true’ bamboo (some varieties of which can take over your entire garden while you are hanging out the washing).

First things first. As mentioned in a previous post, heavenly bamboo is not a bamboo at all, but a member of the barberry (Berberis) family. It comes from East Asia, from the Himalayas to Japan, and its Latin name ‘Nandina‘ comes from the Japanese word ‘nanten‘, or ‘domesticated’. It has indeed been grown as a garden plant in Japan for hundreds of years, and there are many cultivars: the early spring foliage is pink in colour in some varieties, and it can also display scarlet autumn colour, which makes it a plant that punches well above its weight in a small garden. It arrived in the UK in 1804 but seems to have only become popular as a garden plant in the last few years – I don’t remember it at all when I was growing up, but feel free to correct me, as always!

Heavenly bamboo – spring foliage (Photo One)

Another reason for growing this plant might be its berries, which look most inviting, but herein lies a problem. Heavenly bamboo is toxic to birds and animals – the fruit contains compounds that can decompose to hydrogen cyanide, and in North America, cedar waxwings, those voracious gobblers of berries, have been poisoned by the plant, where it is often used to provide rabbit and deer-proof fencing. To read about one such incident, have a read here. I hope that we don’t start using the plant so extensively here in the UK, because I would fear for our berry-eating birds such as fieldfares and redwings, plus our occasional visitors the Bohemian waxwings. Fortunately, at the moment we tend to stick to pyracantha for municipal planting which has no such problems.  For my North American readers, suggested alternatives to heavenly bamboo include American beautyberry (Callicarpa Americana) and Northern spicebush (Lindera benzoin), and there are some other ideas (plus a good explanation of why waxwings are particularly threatened by this plant) in the article here.

Heavenly bamboo is also considered to be an invasive plant in several parts of Florida and other southern states of the US. In spite of its toxicity birds often spread the seeds (presumably it’s only toxic if lots of berries are eaten) and the plant has rhizomatous roots that spread vigorously in the right conditions. It’s yet another example of a plant that is revered in its native habitat, and becomes a right old pain in the backside when it’s introduced somewhere else.

Wild heavenly bamboo (Photo Two)

In Japan and in China, heavenly bamboo is a plant associated with New Year – the foliage and berries are brought into the house and placed on the domestic altar. The stems were put around the necks of children to ward off whooping cough, and the plant was often grown close to the house to ward off fire and to bring good luck, and near to outdoor wash basins to ward off the evil eye. In Japan, it was said that if you shared your nightmares with heavenly bamboo, it will protect you from your darkest fears. More pragmatically, in China the stems have been used to make chopsticks. 

Medicinally, all parts of heavenly bamboo have been used by practitioners, particularly for coughs, asthma and malaria. I note with some interest that it was also used to ‘quieten drunkards’, which is quite an attribute. It was also used as an antidote for food poisoning from fish, although that does feel a little bit ‘out of the frying pan and into the fire’ for my liking. The berries are also said to enhance virility, presumably if they don’t kill you first. You can read all about the medicinal uses of the plant on Steven Foster’s Herbalblog, and very interesting it is too.

I was rather intrigued by another use for heavenly bamboo, which is exclusively Japanese. For over 250 years, ‘snow hares’ or ‘snow bunnies’ have been made out of snow, with ears made from the leaves and eyes made from the berries of the plant. The results are very cute, as you can see. They were often made for ‘snow viewing parties’, along with other sculptures, in a similar vein to the snow men that we build but originally rather more formally. The advantage of something so small is that it can be brought into the house to be admired too.

Snow bunnies (Photo Three)

If you look at the picture below you will see a snow hare in the bottom left of the painting, which is from Utagawa, Toyoharu, who lived from 1735-1814. The painting was probably made in 1772-4. There is a very interesting blog about the derivation of the ‘snow hare’ and its importance in Japanese and Asian folklore here.

Snow viewing party (Utagawa, Toyoharu, 1735-1814- painted 1772-4) (Public Domain)

Now, at this point I would usually be looking for a painting to share with you all, and, as you imagine, there are many lovely portrayals of heavenly bamboo, usually weighed down with snow and with innocent birds feasting on the berries (let’s hope they aren’t going to eat too many). But instead, howsabout this. This is a Noh costume, probably worn by an actor depicting an upper class woman, and dating to the second half of the eighteenth century. It is decorated with depictions of books (suggesting the rise in literacy of the period) and yes, those auspicious heavenly bamboo branches. Just look at that beautiful embroidery. I am awestruck.

Noh costume from the Metropolitan Museum in New York (Public Domain)

Now, try as I might I cannot find us a poem this week, but as I think we’re all in need of as much beauty as we can muster, here are some more exquisite objects. Firstly, there is a fan depicting heavenly bamboo and two little flying insects (Bugwoman approves, of course). It was made in the first third of the Eighteenth century, by Jiang Tingxi, who lived from 1669 to 1732. Then there is a second fan, displaying a rather less happy outcome for at least one of the invertebrates but there’s nature for you. The fans came in a beautiful case, and are part of the Harvard Art Museums collection.

First Fan showing heavenly bamboo and flying insects (Photo Four)

Second Fan. Oh dear. (Photo Five)

The fan case. What a beautiful set of objects (Photo Six)

Whenever I despair of the stupidity, cupidity and sheer cruelty of human beings, our short-sightedness, our inability to do the right thing in the face of overwhelming evidence, our fearfulness and small-mindedness, two things help. Firstly, I think on the kindness and bravery of ‘ordinary’ human beings, who are often overcoming personal difficulties of the most extreme kind while seeking to make the world a better place for the rest of the extended community, human and animal alike. And secondly, I look at the beautiful things that people have made over the centuries and I feel the act of generosity that goes into any creativity, the way that people have always wanted to share their unique vision with others, and how greatly the world has been enriched and enlarged by these acts. Maybe, just maybe, we are not finished yet.

Photo Credits

Photo One from CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=658395

Photo Two by By KENPEI – KENPEI’s photo, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1508991

Photo Three from https://www.mamalisa.com/images/blog/maxresdefault-youtube.jpg

Photo Four from https://www.harvardartmuseums.org/collections/object/49269?position=2

Photo Five from https://www.harvardartmuseums.org/collections/object/211238?position=1

Photo Six from https://ids.lib.harvard.edu/ids/view/408605743?width=3000&height=3000