Shortly after we moved to Epsom, towards the end of a long dry period, we had a few years of underpinning scares. Which some thought was just a wheeze whereby a bit of cracking in elderly plaster was enough to fire up surveyors and underpinning contractors. But whatever the case, they had us residents over a barrel as building societies were refusing to mortgage houses with such cracks. After a while, houses were still standing and the scares subsided.
And now there is a new game in town, with scares about plants with big roots, like pampas grass, bamboo and eucalyptus trees. So the snap above is just the top part of a bamboo, with the roots and various associated concrete posts filling the skip up by the time the contractor, kitted out with a miniature digger, capable of getting through a garage or a side passage, had finished.
Over the hill and into station approach to find this trolley at the top of the passage under Hudson House.
Which found a (non-scoring) friend on the way over to M&S. Picked up a couple of bits in the market and then off down East Street.
No trolleys at the sign of the cannabis (aka the creationists), but there was this bit of detritus art out front, the sort of thing inspired by Dame Trace, who probably invented it to make a bit of clear space between herself and her contemporary Lord Hirst, the man of the dead sheep and such like. Oddly, he went on to make a great deal of money, but somehow seems to have missed out in the gong department. Not yet a lord, at least as far as I am aware.
Pleased to find that the hollyhock was still holding in there. Thriving even.
While on the way down to the Screwfix Underpass, this superficially similar flower. But six petals rather than the five claimed at reference 2.
Google Images says Rose of Sharon, a sort of hibiscus, Hibiscus syriacus, but petals is an issue. I am still convinced that this one has six petals, even from the image alone, while the images turned up by Bing include both five and six petalled examples. Maybe petal count is not such a reliable marker after all.
Bentham & Hooker does not recognise the hibiscus sort of Rose of Sharon, while for Zomlefer it is the only one. In her piece about the large Mallow family, of more than 1,000 species, of which the hibisci account for around 300, she writes of five petals. No talk of six at all. A family which, as it happens, includes the hollyhock. Still pondering.
Home to try out the coconut milk from the market. It took a good whack from the hammer to knock the plastic plunger down through the shell, but I thought that this was better than bashing the thing on the floor as suggested by the market man. The only catch was that I did not much care for the milk inside - while, in the past, I have enjoyed the milk from more ordinary coconuts, from summer shows of one sort or another. I remember it having a thinner, cleaner taste than the present milk. Not improved by refrigeration. I doubt if we will finish it.
The main dish right being potato pie, a confection of potato, onion, egg and cheese which we have quite often. A variation on Spanish omelette, although I have no knowledge of that being where it came from.
Captured the second trolley on the afternoon circuit, a B&M trolley from the middle of the Kokoro Passage.
There was quite a lot of this stuff on the way home. My guess was some kind of bryony. Google Images says Old Man's Beard, Clematis vitalba. Images at reference 3 not very helpful, but those turned up by Bing seem to agree with Google. I dare say BH would have known without all this palaver - being much better on flowering plants - other than trees - than I am.
And some largish ivy, probably on a Hook Road bridge abutment. Not in the same class as that in the alley leading to the railway footbridge from Sainsbury's at Kiln Lane, but bigger leaves than usual all the same. Maybe it is time to ask Gemini if he has learned anything more about why since I last asked him.
Pleased to see that the weeping Atlas cedar is still there, despite the recent 'For Sale' sign. Long may it live!
While nearer home, the new house on the old footprint, by the stream, is coming on apace. I started to worry about large pieces of steel being dumped on top of rather fresh blocks, not for point-load bearing at all. Then I noticed that the steels were actually on top of a white bearer, quite possibly concrete. That was much more like it. Vaguely analogous to the timber wall plates of old.
An image turned up by Bing on the key 'installing timber wall plates on brickwork'. When they built our house in the 1930s, they managed without all the ironmongery - but they did go in for joists, inter alia to stop the walls spreading under load. Maybe you could rely on the carpenters knowing what they were doing in the good old days.
References
Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/07/trolley-929.html.
Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/06/trolley-880.html.
Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clematis_vitalba.
Reference 4: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/06/rock-salt.html.
Reference 5: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2021/08/atlas-cedar.html. A previous scare, four years ago.
Group search keys: trolleysk, 20250802.
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