A botanical Rant

Having a little botanical rant here.

Summer solstice, and the local grass verges are looking amazing. I am lucky in that I live in Cumbria in the middle of nowhere and that the County Council doesn’t get round to mowing our verges till the autumn. Also that the nearest large village is surrounded by what the CC designates “special verges” of high botanical importance.

All this makes me dubious when people in other areas post photographs on social media of big urban areas which are sowing “wild flowers” in “meadows” (quotation marks for irony). These are sown with seed mixes containing arable annuals, including non-natives such as the California Poppy and French Spinach (Red Orache). The result may be pretty but by definition, these are not meadows, which are permanent grassland not arable fields. It’s gardening – admirable, well carried out, eye-catching, but not, as some claim, restoring degraded habitat. It’s more colourful and a bit more diverse than super-mown grass verges, and it saves the councils some expense, which is a fair enough reason to do it, but outside of urban settings it’s inappropriate.

I fear for the natural British flora at the hands of well intentioned but uninformed gardeners.

As I mentioned above, I’m in a rural area. Step out of the farm gate with me, onto the lane which is an ancient drove road, in its heyday a route for cattle and goods being walked into the industrial towns. It’s mown once a year now by the Council, in September or October. I don’t suppose it held as much flora or insect life in the old days as it does now – travelling hooves and teeth will have seen to that. But there were meadows and moorland either side of it and when the hooves and teeth disappeared, it came back.

The verges now are astonishingly diverse.

Walk 200 yards each way with me. Instead of the scientific binomials that I have come to prefer I’ll give you common English names, which to a writer are as much of a joy as the flowers and plants themselves.

Northwards:

1. Grasses: Rye grass

2. Rough meadow grass

3. Wavy hair grass

4. Quaking grass

5. Sweet vernal grass

6. Yorkshire fog

7. False Oat

8. False brome

9. Cocksfoot

10. Ferns: Male Fern

11. Lady Fern

12. Shrubs: Northern Downy Rose

13. Sherard’s Downy Rose

14. Summer snowflake (an escape from my garden, not planted)

15. Geranium macrorrhizum (an escape from my garden, not planted)

16. Giant Bellflower (native but an escape from my garden, not planted)

17. Wood cranesbill

18. Meadow cranesbill

19. Herb Robert

20. Nipplewort

21. Meadow vetchling

22. Bush vetch

23. Birds-foot trefoil

24. White clover

25. Red clover

26. Feverfew

27. Cinquefoil

28. Silverweed

29. Meadow buttercup

30. Bulbous buttercup

31. Common chickweed

32. Mouse-ear chickweed

33. Common sallow

34. Eyebright

35. Great willowherb

36. Lady’s mantle

37. Water avens

38. Mouse-ear hawkweed

39. Rough hawkbit

40. Marsh thistle

41. Spear thistle

42. 3 different species of dandelions

43. Common daisy

44. Ox-eye daisy

45. Germander speedwell

46. Field speedwell

47. Meadowsweet

48. Betony

49. Self-heal

50. Hedge woundwort

51. Harebell

52. Crosswort

53. Common sorrel

54. Cow parsley

55. Black Knapweed

56. Garlic Mustard

57. Hedge bedstraw

58. Lady’s bedstraw

59. Foxglove

60. Yarrow

61. Welsh Poppy

62. Ribwort plantain

Southwards

1. Grasses: Rye grass

2. Rough meadow grass

3. Wavy hair grass

4. Sweet vernal grass

5. Yorkshire fog

6. False Oat

7. Cocksfoot

8. Ferns: Male Fern

9. Lady Fern

10. Common Polypody

11. Shrubs: Common sallow

12. Bay willow

13. Blackthorn

14. Wild plum (Prunus domestica)

15. Hawthorn

16. Bird cherry

17. Ash

18. Hazel

19. Northern Downy Rose

20. Sherard’s Downy Rose

21. Wood cranesbill

22. Meadow cranesbill

23. Herb Robert

24. Shining cranesbill

25. Meadow vetchling

26. Bush vetch

27. Tufted vetch

28. Birds-foot trefoil

29. White clover

30. Red clover

31. Cinquefoil

32. Silverweed

33. Meadow buttercup

34. Celandine

35. Common chickweed

36. Mouse-ear chickweed

37. Broad-leaved willowherb

38. Lady’s mantle

39. Water avens

40. Wood avens

41. Rough hawkbit

42. Marsh thistle

43. 3 different species of dandelions

44. Ox-eye daisy

45. Goat’s-beard

46. Germander speedwell

47. Field speedwell

48. Meadowsweet

49. Betony

50. Self-heal

51. Hedge woundwort

52. Crosswort

53. Common sorrel

54. Cow parsley

55. Pignut

56. Raspberry

57. Wild strawberry

58. Barren strawberry

59. Common Dog-violet

60. Blinks

61. Brooklime

62. Black Knapweed

63. Melancholy thistle

64. Garlic Mustard

65. Lady’s Smock

66. Wood forgetmenot

67. Changing forgetmenot

68. Cleavers

69. Hedge bedstraw

70. Lady’s bedstraw

71. Hogweed

72. Foxglove

73. Yarrow

74. Red Campion

75. Welsh Poppy

76. Ribwort plantain

77. And the odd nettle and common dock, but not many because everything else keeps them in check.

These lists are from memory alone…And that’s without going half a mile up the road where the verges are graced by Northern Marsh Orchid and Common Spotted Orchid and a myriad of their hybrids, plus Bilberry, Lemon-Scented Fern and Hard Fern. All on the roadside.

If I went out with a clipboard throughout the year and noted everything I saw either side of our house I could easily list up to 100 species of plant in a quarter-mile of road. 

Lots of plant diversity brings lots of insect diversity, plentiful insects bring diverse bird and animal life.

Many other verges can be as diverse as ours if they are not mown to within an inch of their life by lawn-obsessives – and if they are spared the attentions of the sow-a-meadow apostles.

Yes, OK, sow native annuals where you have already got a degraded grass verge.

But leave the good’uns alone please.

Feather

What a ragbag of inheritance our language has. 

I've been pondering why the hair round the feet of horses and ponies is called "feather", in the singular, no matter how legs or how many horses we are talking about. 

What other nouns behave like this? Wool, at clipping-time, is a mass noun; the fleeces (plural) as a whole are wool, not wools, though a grader at the mill would define different "wools" by their staple length and fineness. Fluff. We wouldn't call the fibre gathered by the vacuum cleaner "fluffs" even if it had come off several cats. A high quality duvet is filled with down, not downs, despite the filling having come from more than one bird. It's something to do with volume, mass or quantity. Some uncountable quality makes these things mass nouns. 

Rice, gold, butter. Milk, honey, marmalade. Sugar, grass, sand. Hay, straw, bedding. Cutlery, furniture. Concrete. All these are mass nouns. Not pebbles, rocks, or apples. 

So feather is a mass noun when it relates to horses, but not when it relates to birds! Feathers with an "s" are something entirely different, and structurally different from hair (which, incidentally, on humans, in English, is also a mass noun – we never say, "I love your hairs.") 

Why? I dunno. It just is.

Able and disabled

As we crawl slowly out of the privacy of coronavirus lockdown I have been pondering the relationships I have with other people.

The ones I like best are the live-and-let-live kind. My husband and our family are very good at that. We are there for each other when needed, whether that's wild partying, childbirth, death, or cleaning a drain. Otherwise, no news is good news.

Many of my friends are similar. I suppose that's the nature of friendship when you live widely spaced in a rural area. It requires effort and/or fuel to make a call in person, so it tends to be by invitation rather than a casual just-passing intrusion. I gather from things I've read that this is sometimes seen as a masculine attitude; that male friendships are a honeycomb of adjacent interests rather than a mingling of personas. I don't much care whether that's masculine or not. I'll settle for the honeycomb any day, even if it does mean that when I complete the surveys about How the Over-60s are Coping After Coronavirus, the number of people I can list as 10 out of 10 for friendship is non-existent. Family get a 10; friends and work colleagues, usually a 6. The rest are acquaintances, with whom I speak/correspond far more by email and on social media, rather than in person. Lockdown has been a confirmation of my preferences, rather than an issue.

There are a couple of friends whom I meet in person who sometimes make me feel uncomfortable. I have had difficulty in pinning down why, but I think it's because they are very intense and ask quite personal questions. We can go along happily for hours discussing external matters, writing, language, the countryside, botany, music, horse management or whatever, even politics; then suddenly there'll be the "And how are YOU?" question, about your joints / your lungs / your eyesight / your bereavement, which, given the above paragraphs about my preferences for the social distancing of lockdown, feels slightly creepy. I would rather not be asked such questions directly. The answers, I feel every time, are very much only to be shared with immediate family and my medical advisers.

I don't know why my friends ask about these things. From my side, it feels as though I am being used as a target for empathy practice. I have been fiercely independent since childhood, and since adulthood I have had a reputation for being powerful and efficient. I don't want things done for me, even by a friend, just because they think I have had a medical or emotional difficulty. It feels as though it's a power trip for them, and I dislike it a great deal.

I imagine people who have chronic illnesses and permanent injuries feel much the same: I certainly would rather be thanked or congratulated for something I have done than pitied for something I can't. Empathy is one thing, but pity is quite another.

Which brings me to considering the elderly, disabled neighbour. He is registered blind, has had toes amputated due to diabetes, needed skin grafts two years ago because he burned his leg while lighting the open fire, and consumes a list of daily medications as long as your arm. My husband goes in twice a day to check on him and set out his medications, morning and evening, because he can't read the bottle labels any more.

Our neighbour really ought not to be living alone at all, certainly not for five days out of seven, from Monday mid-day to Saturday mid-day when his daughter arrives for the weekend. He can't measure out his liquid medications without spilling them, so he glugs them from the bottle, overdoses himself and gets diarrhoea as a result... leaving a brown trail from the couch to the front garden because he can't go upstairs to the toilet fast enough. And because he's blind he can't see if he has made a mess, and because he is disabled he couldn't clean it up if he did. Another neighbour goes in once or twice a week and cleans up after him. Another sometimes leaves him pies or stews to eat.

When I heard those details from my husband yesterday, I was first revolted, then surprised that he hadn't talked about it before, and then angry with the mostly-absent daughter. That degree of unsanitary living is a "high" level of concern on the AgeUK scale. Yet the old man probably thinks, as I've outlined above for myself, that his independence matters more than any other consideration.

At what point should we, as neighbours, interfere further? We can't ask social services for help with his care, not without his consent (disregarding whatever the daughter might have to say). You can’t force someone to accept help or act on their behalf unless they agree to it, and he's not mentally incompetent, just stubbornly independent. I suppose we have to wait until he feels he's had a really bad day, when he has no choice but to swallow his pride and ask for help.

As for me, I think I'd rather break my neck playing with horses before I reach that age.

Galloway Gate - free this weekend

Freebie all weekend: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0872GB6VP

About the Lune Gorge, and several pieces about Fell ponies and their owners and the land they belong to -

- go on, it's worth a look and costs nowt!

I've updated all my book prices too, and the full list is here: http://www.jackdawebooks.co.uk/prices.htm

While you're thinking, here's a sample from Galloway Gate.

Darkfall CV-19

Dusk drifts smoke-blue from the east.

Sheep nipnipnip at the frosting grass

(eat, eat before night). A distant dog

barks the same rhythm, with no message.

We have met no-one since dawn.

No bikers from the Devil's Bridge,

no walkers queueing for the mountains,

no chatty neighbours bringing eggs,

and for this we are thankful.

Only one con-trail, pink, in the west

draws a line at the end of the day.

The blackbird whistles the trees to bed.

The air is clear of everything but rooks

whose funeral wings wipe the sky clean.

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0872GB6VP

HRH

I did not watch The Funeral. I am sure it will be more or less on a loop on social media and several TV channels for the next 24 hours. 

 

I drove my old Fell pony instead and thought, as we trundled gently through the sunshine, of the carriage drivers I've known who will do it no more, and the one who said that his Fell team were "all ancient, like me."

 

Easter Sunday and Remembrance Sunday

Easter Sunday and Remembrance Sunday have two things in common, and one of them is that they are Sundays.

The other is that they make us feel better about death.

Both are linked to a human pattern of thought wants to attribute purpose to a person dying. "Jesus died for our sins." "Soldiers died to keep us free." To which I have to say, "Sentimental tosh. They were killed." 

Or, since the grammar checker advises against the use of the passive voice, "Someone killed them". 

Or, to remove more vagueness, it wasn't "someone" who killed them, it was another man (on the whole). 

"A soldier killed them."

...or a Government employee of some kind, whatever term you choose -- a man (or a woman) employed or co-erced to behave in a way that served policies that had been formed by other men in authority. Pilate's power came from the ruling Roman empire. Rommel and Himmler and other generals derived their authority from Hitler's Nazi regime.

So let's rephrase it yet again:

"The Empire of Rome killed Jesus."

"The Nazi party killed Corporal Jones and his mates."

And both can be boiled down even further into:

"Political power and greed killed them."

I don't believe for more than half a minute that either group of victims was intending to "die for us". 

The notions of sacrifice that are attached to Easter and Remembrance Sunday have been put there by other people, and that's because humans don't like guilt and regret and loss, and they do like a story to have a purpose; the same way we like fiction better than news broadcasts, and conspiracy theories better than science. Humans like over-simplification - the "elevator pitch".

Still, if we must have a story and a purpose, then let's respect Jesus (if he existed) and the war dead (who definitely did) for having been regarded as a notable threat to a policy or a system. 

But consider also the possibility that the lofty notions of sacrifice or deity have been attached to their deaths afterwards, by those who survived, to make them (us) feel better.

The Awesomeness of the Fell Pony

You may have noticed that I have a very strong bias in my horse "character" preferences. Hoofprints in Eden, Scratch and String of Horses all feature or star Fell ponies. Guess why...

http://www.jackdawebooks.co.uk/

Because they are awesome...

Newcomers to the blog may not realise that I don't just write books about Fell ponies (or that I write other things as well). I write the script/s and commentate  for the Fell Pony Society's Display Team. I edit the Fell Pony Society's Magazine, and look after their web site. I serve on the FPS Council and on a couple of sub committees. I'm on the FPS sub committee that's planning the celebrations of the Society's Centenary coming up in 2022 - helping with a book, a video and an exhibition. 

 

I also look after the historical resource that is the Fell Pony And Countryside Museums web site, which gives background and historical context to the real life collections at Dalemain.

Not bad for an awd OAP grannie, eh? Oh aye, and in between times I drive my Fell pony.

 

Step aside, we're comin' through.