Dear Readers, East Finchley Festival is happening on 23rd June, and for the first time in ages the community group that I belong to, Friends of Coldfall Wood and Muswell Hill Playing Fields, is taking a stall. But what to do? We have lots of exciting ideas, but I am planning to do a plant identification quiz on these two window boxes, which feature meadow plants for clay soil – this is what we’ve planted in the meadow on Muswell Hill Playing Fields. We’re also planning to raffle the mini-meadows to raise funds so that we can do more walks, and activities.

To be honest for an introvert like me, being at a huge community event  can feel a bit overwhelming, but I’m looking forward to the chance to meet and chat with people, and to hang out with other nature-inspired folk. This is the Festival’s 50th Anniversary, so fingers crossed for dry weather!

And in other news, I was planting up the mini-meadows when I heard the magpies going absolutely berserk.

They’re at that stage when the nestlings are just about to leave the nest, so they’re on very high alert, and one of the things that they hate most is a cat, however innocent. So I went to see what was going on, and found this little beauty, though when I saw her/him they were perched precipitously  above my garden side-gate, which means that they were a good ten feet off the floor. It didn’t stop the cat from doing that funny rattling call that they do when they see a bird, but I think that a magpie is a bit big for a light snack.

Still, this one has obviously not forgotten its wild origins. S/he stalked off after a few minutes, as if to indicate that the magpie hadn’t actually scared the bejassus out of them, and everything was absolutely cool. Off s/he went, tail in the air, to torment some other feathered creature. Or to find a sunny spot to doze in, which ever is easier.

Dear Readers, how can it be June already? I used to laugh at my poor old Mum when she said that the days go more quickly as you get older, but she was absolutely right. Sorry Mum. But now that it’s June, why do I still have the heating on, albeit occasionally, and why am I still wearing my bedsocks? The time is out of joint, for sure.

I am about two-thirds of the way through my revision, and have just whooshed through my block on the carbon cycle. There’s a module on geoengineering – goodness, all the wacky ideas that people have had, from seeding the oceans to artificial trees to sticking a reflector up at Lagrange Point 1 to catch some of the solar radiation. We could definitely plant more trees, but on the other hand I rather think we should try to preserve the venerable giants that we have.

Just a few more days and I’ll be done, and the rest of the summer will spread out before me (though I do notice that June is looking particularly busy, what with all the friends I haven’t met for a few weeks and the East Finchley Festival (where Friends of Coldfall Wood (aka me and five other devoted wood-lovers) will be raffling off a couple of mini-meadows with any luck)). There are rather too many nested brackets in that sentence, but tbh my head is too full of the history of OPEC and the sustainable  endeavours of the community of Eigg to sort it out at the moment.

Anyhow, here’s something for a little peace and harmony, and also for my dear friend A, who suffered a loss this week. I know that she loves Edward Thomas, as do I, so here is Adlestrop. Can’t you just feel the quiet of the train station, the heat of the day, and the hear the birds singing?

Adlestrop, by Edward Thomas

Yes, I remember Adlestrop —
The name, because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontedly. It was late June.

The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.
No one left and no one came
On the bare platform. What I saw
Was Adlestrop — only the name

And willows, willow-herb, and grass,
And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,
No whit less still and lonely fair
Than the high cloudlets in the sky.

And for that minute a blackbird sang
Close by, and round him, mistier,
Farther and farther, all the birds
Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.

The River Frome in Dorchester

Dear Readers, I am powering on with my revision, and I now have numerous mind-maps that are becoming more and more complicated as I think of new connections and new colours and new linkages. I feel as if I’m making good progress, but I’ve also discovered that, unlike days of yore when I could study for hours, two hours at a time is about my limit. Still, I’m sure that two concentrated hours is better than four hours of ‘messing about’ (technical term) so hopefully it will be enough.

Currently I’m revising the block of the course that dealt with water, with all its many complications. For one thing, water has that annoying habit of moving, so who owns it is often contentious, even more so when it’s the Nile or the Danube and moves through many countries on its way to the sea. Then there’s the historical context to consider – when the British were in charge of Egypt, for example, they forbade any of the other countries along the route to take any water from the Nile, even though the Blue Nile arises as far away as Ethiopia. Then there are people damming rivers and diverting them and polluting them and overfishing them. And then there’s the whole issue of sanitation, which is intrinsically linked to water supply and pollution and health.

No wonder two hours concentrated study is enough, though it’s fascinating stuff. And there’s so much I didn’t know. Sanitation is actually a bigger problem than water supply, because lots of people are prepared to donate for a water pump, but not so many are happy to put their names to a compostable toilet. And so, girls in many developing countries have to risk being raped when they have to go out into the countryside at night to spend a penny. Environmental issues are so often complicated, interrelated and subject to cultural and social factors.

I have really loved this course, with its interdisciplinary focus and wide range of things to think about. But from October it will be back to hard science. I am loving the variety of this Open degree. Two more years to go! And then what? I can’t imagine not studying something. Let’s see where we get to.

Newly-fledged long-tailed tits in St Pancras and Islington Cemetery

Dear Readers, I have the final exam for my Open University course on Thursday 6th June, so I will be making some very short posts between then and now. I did think about having a break, but actually it does me good to have something to think about that isn’t negative externalities or the intrinsic value of nature. The course this year has been a bit less science-y and a bit more about economics/politics/sociology etc etc, so it’s been stimulating and so far I’ve done pretty well with my assignments. However,  I must admit that I’m itching to get back to some complicated microbiology and possibly some more multicoloured dough balls to see which colour my magpie friends prefer.

Come October, I’ll be two-thirds of the way through the course. I started it in the middle of the pandemic, as something to distract me from being locked-down and grieving for Dad, but I have loved it. Aged 18 I decided to pursue the arts rather than the sciences, because the school timetable couldn’t cope with someone who would like to study both. Aged 60, I decided that if I ever wanted to be a ‘mad scientist’, I needed to get stuck in. It’s never too late to challenge the brain, even if it might be a bit late to actually make science my career seeings as I’ve retired. But there is such an elegance and precision to science, in marked contrast to the delightful messiness of the creative arts. I find it helps to balance my life in a most unexpected way.

And here is a poem! This is by a poet that I’d never read before, Albert Goldbarth. I rather love this. See what you think.

The Sciences Sing a Lullabye

Albert Goldbarth
1948 –

Physics says: go to sleep. Of course
you’re tired. Every atom in you
has been dancing the shimmy in silver shoes
nonstop from mitosis to now.
Quit tapping your feet. They’ll dance
inside themselves without you. Go to sleep.

Geology says: it will be all right. Slow inch
by inch America is giving itself
to the ocean. Go to sleep. Let darkness
lap at your sides. Give darkness an inch.
You aren’t alone. All of the continents used to be
one body. You aren’t alone. Go to sleep.

Astronomy says: the sun will rise tomorrow,
Zoology says: on rainbow-fish and lithe gazelle,
Psychology says: but first it has to be night, so
Biology says: the body-clocks are stopped all over town
and
History says: here are the blankets, layer on layer, down and down.

My poor buddleia leaves….

Dear Readers, my poor benighted Buddleia plants (two wild-type monsters in the front garden) have both been afflicted with leaf and bud eelworm. One of my readers suggested that this was what was causing the strange variegated appearance of the leaves last year, and it’s taken me until now to follow up. Dear oh dear. 

Eelworms are actually microscopic nematode worms. We hear a lot about these invertebrates in connection with garden bio-control these days, but they can also be parasites. These extraordinary little creatures have colonised every habitat on earth, from the deep seas  (where they comprise 90 percent of all the organisms found) to the poles. We have no idea how many species there are, with estimates varying from 25,000 to over a million. Suffice it to say that wherever you go there are probably thousands, if not millions, of nematodes, mostly minding their own business but sometimes turning up as parasites of plants or animals, including us.

The Buddleja National Collection website (I have no idea whether it’s Buddleia or Buddleja, but let’s not call the whole thing off just yet) suggests that the critters in my leaves are Aphelenchoides ritzemabosi, and there might be another species in the bud, A. fragariae. Here is a photo of the former.

Photo by By Jody Fetzer – http://www.forestryimages.org/browse/detail.cfm?imgnum=5026046, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17505099

In the spring, adult worms swim up the stem of a plant – they can only do this if there is high humidity. Well, I don’t know about where you live, but here in East Finchley we’ve had more precipitation this year than in any year I can remember, so no wonder the buddleia is looking shoddy. Once they reach a leaf, the tiny animals enter the leaf via one of the stomata (the breathing pores of the plant) and happily set about eating the leaf, laying eggs and generally having a good time. At the end of the season the worms go into a quiescent state and remain in the dead leaf after it falls, waiting for another lovely damp spring so that they can launch themselves into action again.

One way to detect eelworms is said to be to take some affected leaves, tear them into tiny pieces and leave them in a glass of water, at which the worms may abandon ship and be visible at the bottom of the glass. I’ve done this with a few leaves, so I’ll let you know if I manage to spot anything.

During a warm spell, the entire life cycle of the leaf and bud eelworm can be completed in ten days, which gives you some idea of why they might proliferate so easily and quickly. Furthermore, they attack a whole range of plants, including strawberries, chrysanthemums, anemones, creeping bellflower, rhododendrons and about thirty other species. The RHS suggests that you burn all affected leaves and buds. Well, at this point that would involve setting fire to my entire shrub. However, I think there’s hope. I have been noticing a lot of blue tits and sparrows in both of the buddleia just lately. They might be eating the aphids and ants, of which there are also quite a few, but they do seem to be pecking at the discoloured areas of leaf. Do they sense that there’s a bit of protein in there, I wonder? The birds have been spotted pecking at the leaves of horse chestnut that are scarred by leaf miner moth too, so maybe they’re gradually recognising a new food source. Fingers crossed, because spraying for this particular nematode would do no good at all (not that I’d ever do such a thing).

So, hopefully the buddleia will be resilient enough to cope with yet another pest. It’s no fun being a street shrub in a relentlessly urban area, with climate change messing up the seasons and pollution adding to the stress. I always think it’s a miracle that things do as well as they do.

A Smoke Tree!

Dear Readers, I have clearly not been paying enough attention to the street trees in East Finchley for a while. The one above is fairly close to my house, and it was puzzling me, until I realised that it was actually a Smoke Bush (Cotinus coggryia), but growing as a tree. I think this is the variety known as ‘Royal Purple’, and it is looking pretty splendid at the moment.

The sheer variety of street trees in the County Roads has increased greatly over the past few years: we have Crepe Myrtle, Hibiscus, Bragania (Erect Crab Apple), and a couple of Amelanchior. And can I just put in a plug for the amazing Paul Wood (a bit of nominative determinism there if ever I saw some), who has produced a new edition of London’s Street Trees, due out on 6th June. This is the third time that he’s revised the book, because so many new trees are being planted in order to cope with the changing climate, and every edition so far has been well worth having. At the moment I can only see it being sold by Amazon, but hopefully it will soon be more widely available.

Anyhow, returning to the Smoke Bush/Tree – the best example I’ve ever seen is the one in the photos below, and I must make a return visit to Muswell Hill to see if it’s survived the never-ending rain that we’ve had so far this summer. And if you’d like to learn  more, read on (and don’t miss the poem at the end. I think it sums up both the plant, and a certain mood, beautifully).

Smoke Bush (Cotinus coggygria)

Dear Readers, if ever there was a plant to put one in mind of a Persian cat, this is it. Who could pass by without giving it a little stroke? Those fluffy, cloudy flowerheads are a result of most of the flowers aborting and turning into a mass of wispy plumes. The ones that do survive turn into little green fruits.

Smoke bush fruit (Photo One)

This shrub, in Muswell Hill, is probably the most splendid that I’ve ever seen, so I had to share it with you all.

The smoke bush comes from a great swathe of land, from Southern Europe right the way to Northern China. It’s a member of the Anacardiaceae or cashew family, and the family member that you might be most familiar with is the sumac . There is only one other member of the Cotinus genus, the American smoketree (Cotinus obovatus), which doesn’t have such smokey flowers but has the most extraordinary autumn colours. It is quite a rare tree, found only in a few pockets of forests in the south-eastern USA, and considered to be endangered.

American smokewood in Kew Gardens (Photo Two)

I’ve also seen smoke bushes with purple foliage, which is all very well but I don’t think the ‘smoke’ contrasts as nicely as it does with the green foliage. What do you think?

Smoke bush ‘Royal Purple’ (Photo Three)

‘My’ smoke bush

Smoke bush is rich in tannins, and the bark, wood and leaves have all been used as a tonic, and as a treatment for stomach ulcers, diarrhoea and mouth inflammation.

The plant’s wood also produces a yellow dye which was known as young fustic, and was used in the carpet industry in the Eastern Mediterranean region. There was also a dye known as old fustic, which came from a tree known as Dyer’s Mulberry (Maclura tinctoria), which was used during WWI to dye soldiers’ uniforms. Old fustic was said to produce a longer-lasting colour than young fustic, but alas both of them have now been replaced with artificial dyes. I say ‘alas’, but I imagine the trees are relieved!

Cloth dyed with young fustic (Photo Four)

The wood is also very attractive – see the sculpture below by wood carver Tom Lowe at the Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden in Richmond, Virginia. At the Garden they invite sculptors and wood carvers to work with the results of any pruning or tree surgery work that they need to do, and the results are often very pleasing.

Carved smokebush wood (Photo Five)

And here, of course, is a poem. I love the last line. I, too, sometimes find, to my surprise, that I’m no longer sad.

Photo Credits

Photo One by By Jerzy Opioła (Poland) – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=619871

Photo Two by © Copyright David Hawgood and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence

Photo Three by By Photo by David J. Stang – source: David Stang. First published at ZipcodeZoo.com, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=61240385

Photo Four by http://cameo.mfa.org/wiki/File:Yfustic_copperas_sug_lead.jpg

Photo Five from https://www.lewisginter.org/mementos-of-change/

Look at that sad little face….

Dear Readers, East Finchley Cemetery was definitely the place to be buried back in the late Victorian/early Edwardian era – the angels are magnificent and beautifully carved, the Celtic knots on some of the headstones are intricate, and there are even a few marble roses about. This is a beautifully manicured cemetery, where every tree and bush is pruned and managed, unlike the anarchic tangle of some parts of St Pancras and Islington Cemetery just up the road. So, it depends on my mood as to which one to visit. Do I want the harmony of one, or the occasional chaos of the other? Today, harmony won out, and so we wandered happily amongst the graves, discussing which charities we’d leave our money to and whether we wanted to be buried or cremated. I quite like the idea of being food for my beloved invertebrates, but my husband doesn’t want to take up valuable land and would rather be returned to ashes and used as fertiliser. It’s always good to have these conversations, even though we both secretly believe that we’ll be the first people in human history to live forever. 

I love the way that each grave is its own microhabitat. Some (presumably the damper ones) are full of buttercups.

Others are full of daisies and herb robert.

A great tit sang its tiny head off from the top of a tree…

And the grave below appears to be to be doing all kinds of peculiar things with its angles. I was very intrigued by the name of the man buried there – Guy Turing Bruce. I wondered if he was any relative of Alan Turing, the famous Bletchley code-breaker? I must do some more research.

Up we go to the rose garden. There are some rather lovely white versions of the usual bellflowers – whether these are a natural mutation or a new variety I have no idea. I always find it entertaining to see these plants being sold in garden centres, when around here in North London all you need is a bare wall, or a shady spot between a fence and a path, and you’ll get hundreds of ‘Port and Posch’ for free.

Here is the usual purple version, growing a few metres away.

One of my favourite spots in the cemetery is a wild garden called The Spinney – it has silver birch and a whole variety of woodland wildflowers. If I end up in this cemetery, I’d like to find a resting place here, though I would have to be cremated rather than buried. And preferably dead in either case.

Pink hogweed

Ribwort plantain

Herb robert (again)

I spot a jay, but s/he isn’t very cooperative. You can see her zooming off like Superman just above the right of the centre gravestone, if you squint.

The crematorium itself has its usual sign on the ash-tray, though I could see no signs of habitation…

And I love the way that the crematorium building is standing magnificently against the stormy North London sky. It should come as no surprise that it was designed by the same people who built the Golders Green Crematorium, another Italianate edifice.

No cemetery is complete without an interloping cat. This one sat making ‘blinky-eyes’ at me from a safe distance.

And on the way home, I had to pop in to see the Chitalpa trees (Desert Willows) of Church Lane. You might remember that these five street trees had been planted and given the names of various local people. I can report that all of them are looking great, and that all apart from one still have their name tags. I am keeping my fingers crossed that one of these days I’ll actually catch them in flower.

Now, at the very bottom of Church Lane is an area of derelict land – this used to be a petrol station, but has lain neglected and unused for about ten years in my estimation. Unused, that is, by people. However, it is gradually being colonised by plants, which are bursting through the concrete in a most satisfactory fashion. To begin with it was largely buddleia, but there’s a much greater collection of plants now.

There’s lots of red valerian. There are both the red and the pink varieties, and I think they look rather splendid against the graffiti on the back wall.

There are those early colonisers sycamore…

..and birch…

and some prickly lettuce…

No doubt at some point all this land-banking will stop, but in the meantime it’s quite the thing to track all these different plants taking advantage of the habitat. I love the way that plants will move into even the most polluted and difficult areas and make them their own.

Common poppy (Papaver rhoeas)

Dear Readers, I am always astonished by the plants that just seem to pop up in urban areas. This poppy has emerged from the pot where I planted some crocuses earlier this year, and I have no idea where it has come from – much as I like poppies, I’ve never planted them, so this is something of a gift. I love the way that the bud seems almost too heavy for the stem, and how the flower opens its face to the sun. I fully expect all the petals on this one to have dropped by this evening – it is amongst the most ephemeral of plants, plus we are expecting a thunderstorm here at (checks watch) 15.00 so that should put paid to that.

I am also noticing the ants marching up and down the stem. Chances are that they’re moving some aphids about, bless them. We also have a few ants in the living room at the moment – they must feel as if they’re marching across some huge, featureless plain as they explore the floorboards in search of something edible, though I notice that they walk right over the croissant crumb that some greedy person dropped in their haste to get some carbohydrates this morning. They seem to have a great fondness for cat food however, so I have moved the cat’s feeding bowls upstairs. Let’s hope the ants never get their heads around stairs.

This morning I was over at Coldfall Wood, and, growing right beside the road I spotted another plant that I’d not seen before. The yellow chap in the middle of the photo is goatsbeard (Tragopogon pratensis) – otherwise known as salsify, though it’s another species with purple flowers that is the one where the roots are eaten in fancy restaurants. There is lots of purple salsify over in St Pancras and Islington Cemetery and, as with this yellow species, I have no idea where it’s come from, or why it’s popped up now. But it does show, yet again, that an interest in plants (or indeed any part of the natural world) enlivens even the most ordinary of days. You just never know what you’re going to see when you step out of the front door.

Dear Readers, I’m sure that if you’ve been reading Bugwoman for a while you’ll know that I have an inordinate fondness for bumblebees. My husband was nervous about insects as a child, but he is completely relaxed with bumblebees flying within inches of his shoulder. I always think of bumbles as being ‘entry-level’ for people who are slightly insect-phobic – they’re big and furry, like flying teddy bears, and could not be more gentle – if you get a little too close they’ll raise a leg as if to say ‘thus far and no further’, but they will usually fly away rather than get confrontational. Plus, they pay humans practically no attention, unlike their relatives the wasps, who often seem a little too curious about what exactly we’re eating.

Bumblebees are also able to cope with very complex flower designs that other bees can’t seem to master – note the bumble in the first photo who is accessing the nectar in the just-opened honeysuckle. Of course, being heavy (so that plants such as antirrhinums open when they land on them) helps, as does the fact that different bumblebees have different tongue-lengths, and so can access different flower designs. But experiments seem to show that bumblebees can memorise how to access about five different ‘types’ of flowers. In order to learn another one, they have to forget one of the earlier designs. This sounds rather like me as I revise for my OU examination, so I am sympathetic.

Anyhow, I planted some Sicilian Honey Garlic especially for the bumblebees, and it seems to have worked. The upside-down flowers of this allium hold no fears for them.

Now, what’s interesting about this plant is that as each flower is pollinated, it closes up and becomes more ‘bud-like’, which means that the bees can’t access it any longer, and have to move on to other, unpollinated flowers. Watch as this bumble does exactly that, rejecting the flowers at the top of the plant which are closing up, and moving on to the ones that are still providing nectar. I love seeing this kind of relationship between plants and their pollinators.

Here is the Sicilian honey garlic only yesterday…

And here it is today. Note how several of the flowers are now closing up and starting to move into a vertical position. In the end, the plant will look as if it has a miniature Disney castle on the top. I promise to include a photograph. The one on the left that looks like a bud is now completely inaccessible to anymore bees, forcing them onto the flowers that are still open.

Anyhow, in spite of my obvious bumblebee favouritism, I do still love all the other bees – we’ve had ashy mining bees and early mining bees back on the flowering hydrangea today. The plant has a lovely subtle smell, especially after rain, and it is my pride and joy. Last year it was a bit shielded by some scaffolding, but it’s making up for it this year.

Ashy mining bee

Early mining bee

And finally, after an unfortunate incident in the shed (wherein an unidentified rodent gnawed through the last remaining non-metal container, and deposited a small hillock of peanuts in the middle of the floor), we are distributing said peanuts to all comers on the bird table. The jackdaws have taken a few, but basically it’s down to this guy. 

And here is a little film of him or her enjoying this sudden bounty. I know they’re a pest, but I always say that when you decide to make your garden welcoming to wildlife, you can’t be picky about who turns up. Plus, I have always had a soft spot for the underdog, for the less-than-glamorous, the maligned and the misunderstood. After all, many of us have fallen into at least one of these categories, and some of us know what  it’s like to have been at the intersection of all of them. It’s hard not to feel at least some empathy for our fellow creatures of all species as they just try to live their lives.

Dear Readers, this week I’ve started reading Moby Dick by Herman Melville, inspired by one of the other participants on my Azores trip. And what an astonishing read it is! It’s a beefy book and I’m only about 15 per cent of the way through if my Kindle is to be believed, but already it’s had me roaring with laughter, scratching my head and holding my breath.

And this got me thinking about what other books are out there that I’ve never tackled. I studied English for my first degree, so I’ve read a lot of ‘the classics’ – the whole of Austen, Dickens, most of George Eliot, a lot of European fiction. But here, off the top of my head, are some of the books that I’ve never read and would like to have a go at at some point.

• The Great Gatsby (Scott Fitzgerald)
• Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
• Things Fall Apart (Chinua Achuebe)
• In Search of Things Past (Marcel Proust)
• Wide Sargasso Sea (Jean Rhys)
• The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov)
• The Age of Innocence (Edith Wharton)

And I’m sure there are hundreds more, but one has to start somewhere. However, I also have a pile of non-fiction books nearly as tall as me waiting to be read. I think that now I’m retired I can justify popping a ‘reading hour’ into the day’s activities somewhere – I read before I go to sleep, but sadly these days sometimes that’s about 20 minutes before I’m dropping my book on the poor unsuspecting dozing cat, who curls up on my stomach and complains if I’m not in bed by 9 o’clock.

So, Readers, over to you. Do you have books that you feel you’d love to read, but have never managed (so far) to find the time? Have you read any of the ones on my list, and if so, do you have thoughts about them? Which of the books that you’ve read do you wish you’d never bothered with? Let me know in the comments if you are of a literary persuasion.