Comedy pigeons

At this time of year, we, particularly BH, are much amused by the spectacle of large fat pigeons balancing precariously on very thin twigs while they make grabs for the tasty buds.

This morning, say around 06:30, a couple of pigeons were on the plum tree next door, I think a sucker from a tree which was once cut down. Bounding up and down nicely they were; a wonder how they kept their footing, not that you would know that from the zoomed snap above - although it does show the relative size of bird and twig.

I remember now that my father's plum trees suffered from attack by tits at this time of year, I had thought by stripping off the flower buds, but today's pigeons seemed to be going for both flower and leaf buds. He sometimes tried hanging fluffy white stuff - possibly glass fibre - in the branches to deter them, but it was a messy business and not, as I recall, terribly effective.

While indoors, the triffid continues to make progress, with the lower florets coming away from the stem and nearly in open flower. Last noticed at reference 1.

With the two orchids beyond taking a well-earned rest after a long period, some years, of energetic flowering.

And today we wait to see what Letitia does about Donald. A rum way to run elections. I worry about the the increasing tendency to take politicians to law, rather than simply ejecting them to tend their vegetable gardens (or whatever) by due process of ballot box. A taking which may well be justified in particular cases, but a tendency which can only, to mind, degrade the quality of public life. Decent people are not going to be prepared to go in for politics with the threat of legal action or worse hanging over them when they fail or fall out of favour.

In the meantime, in the margins of bread batch No.714, I have been inspecting the bluebells in the garden. All coming on well, with the English ones (Hyacinthoides non-scripta) a few days ahead of the Spanish ones (Hyacinthoides hispanica). With the ones planted near the house a few days ahead of the wilder ones further up the (back) garden. I suppose one should expect the English before the Spanish, their having had more time to acclimatise to the colder climate.

At least one clump of white Engish, a (usually cultivated) variety of the blue, seemingly with no other common name than the oxymoronic white bluebell. With the 'non-scripta' bit of the botanical name being a relic of some taxonomic battle of past times. 

I note in passing that bluebells are in a quite different part of the botanical world from campanulas or bellflowers, despite some similarity in the flowers. The first being in the asparagus family (Asparagaceae), the second in their own family (Campanulaceae), part of the aster order. 'Campana' being a late Latin word for bell, making its way into a number of other English words, for example campanology, the study of bell founding, bell ringing and church bells generally. OED has about a column and a half of them. Not to be confused with 'companion' which is quite different.

See references 3, 4 and 5.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/03/trolleys-650-and-651.html.

Reference 2: Donald Trump’s $464mn bond is due on Monday. What happens next: End of grace period could set off next phase of fight between former president and New York attorney-general - Joshua Chaffin, Joe Miller, Financial Times - 2024.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyacinthoides_non-scripta.

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyacinthoides_hispanica.

Reference 5: https://www.rhs.org.uk/weeds/bluebells-as-weeds. For a more gardeners' flavoured view.