Wednesday Wandering

North westwards.

Along the Chelsea Embankment,

turning eastwards into Swan Walk,

and into the Chelsea Physic Garden,

founded in 1673 by the Society of Apothecaries of London,

so that their apprentices could learn to grow medicinal plants and study their uses.

When the garden was founded 'physic' meant

'pertaining to things natural as distinct from the metaphysical.'

I'm sorry I didn't take a more care to note down the plant names -

they were meticulously labelled.

Fortune's Tank pond.

Happy the Man

Happy the man, and happy he alone,

He who can call today his own:

He who, secure within, can say,

Tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today.

Be fair or foul or rain or shine

The joys I have possessed, in spite of fate, are mine.

Not Heaven itself upon the past has power,

But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.

John Dryden from Horace

Hair cuts

We all had haircuts at the weekend and today

the trees did too.

The Deodar cedar in the front garden

is really too big for its situation but

as it is home to many Goldcrests, Britain's smallest bird,

I cannot countenance having it taken down.

It took four men five hours to do all the work

some of it literally out on a limb.

One of several bay trees had to be taken out,

but I rescued these clippings for drying.

Goat willow, pittosporum, apple, box, ash, laurel

all needed drastic thinning.

The pyracanthus, although beautiful for its berries,

is viciously thorny and rampant

all along our boundary.

A dusk walk

which took us from hilltop city views

past the parish church,

to a deserted riverside park.

It was pitch dark when we got home,

just in time for a slice of Nigella's apple and walnut cake.

Flat on my back

Can't go slower than that!

Go Slow

This is my mother's red Morroco leather manicure set.

Here are the contents, most of them a complete mystery to me

but presumably not to her.

It sat on a proper dressing table.

And she sat in front of it,

properly.

Here is the sort of table that would do it justice and

there is the sort of person I might have been,

glimpsed in the mirror adjusting my earrings.

This is the contemplative pose that I might have struck while

toying with an emery board,

or applying make up.

There's that deeply self-absorbed gaze again,

the one that says,

'There's really no hurry'.

'Admire your pearls.'

'Brush your hair - 100 strokes each night.'

'Powder your face.'

'Put on your hat.'

'The world can wait.'