A little advice from long ago:
Learn to do well, seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow… Come now let us reason together says the LORD:
though your sins be as scarlet,they shall be as white as snow.
Be willing and obedient.
Isaiah 1: 16- 18 I didn’t include 16 but read it all if you like.
Sometimes the gardener has to choose what is more convenient for themselves. Do you carry buckets of water for several days and stake the plant carefully or bring in the tall blooms. I brought them in. The tall red gladioli.
Then there were the Lords and Ladies growing under the black current shrubs. A fine group. Apparently their root was once used to make laundry starch which kept ruffs worn around the necks of gentry stiff during the late 16th and early 17th century. Their shiny red berries are known to be dreadfully poisonous and the best way to keep this plant from taking over or stealing nutrients from others is to get rid of the seed heads. I brought them in.
I then got side tracked by a quote about poison. I wonder if it is true:
The instinct of nearly all societies is to lock up anybody who is truly free. First, society begins by trying to beat you up. If this fails, they try to poison you. If this fails too, they finish by loading honours on your head.
All said by Jean Cocteau.
The green, shiny leaves you can see are from the bays. A small twig from a pile of leaves on twigs. These two self seeded trees I keep in ball shape with slim stems had grown into each other and so I stood a while with them, carefully snipping them back into two spheres. I will dry some leaves but not many as it is easier to use the fresh in soups.
So here they are Christmas colours in July.
Now for the beech tree which I want to have recorded here. This year 2026 it is heavy with nuts last year it was the oak trees that were heavy with acorns. This tree grows just outside the blue bell woods. I have photographed it before.
The fruit is a three-angled nut in a capsule that splits to release the seed.
A tree made up of several major trunks hidden here by summer leaves.
And here is a thought about beech trees from Phillips Brooks:
It is not pride when the beech tree refuses to copy the oak. The only chance of any healthy life for it is to be as full on beech tree as it can be.
If you now look more closely under the beech you will see the delicate seed cases of the blue bells that covered the ground during the spring.
And here is a look at one stalk I brought in from our garden.
The summer blue- bell.
I hope you have a good day whenever you read this.
Take care,
Sandy 🙂