Tuesday, April 05, 2011
Signs of spring
Off round the circuit yesterday morning, and a nice sunny spring morning it was too. Needing to pay a visit to Epsom Coaches it was convenient to do the circuit anti-clockwise rather than my usual clockwise, which gave me a different view on the stream down Longmead Road, with the result that I discovered a new-to-me flower. A whole nest of them growing on the banks of a bit of the stream, a conical compound flower, rather the size and shape of that of a horse chestnut, quite close to the ground and certainly not attached to a tree. Perusal of our Collins' guide revealed that it was the flower of the butterbur (white sort not creamy) which, if I keep an eye on it, will have grown very large, rhubarb like leaves by mid-summer.
Along the way we learn about the lesser and greater water parsnip. What relation they are to the land parsnip which one roasts was not clear.
Carrying on round Horton Lane greeted by a splendid display of spring flowers growing in the roadside verges. Lots of dandelions, daisies and others. Glowing in the mid-morning sun. So all was well and good until I spotted one of the grass cutting contractors in the distance on his sit-and-ride busily cutting them all down while he paid attention to whatever was being played into his ear plugs. My beef being that at a time when local councils are supposed to be making the deepest cuts for a generation they can still find the money to chop down the spring flowers. Perhaps it is the same chap who likes to chop down trees on Epsom Common on his days off? Or maybe it is a chappess.
Many years ago there was a chap called Leslie Chapman who, while grass warden of various air force bases, made the interesting discovery that if you mowed the grass just a couple of times a year there was a gain in amenity in that you had the grass and its flowers to look at and a considerable saving of money over mowing the grass twelve times a year. More recently the grass warden at Nonsuch Park has, independently, made the same discovery. So there is hope that Epsom Borough Council will get there in the end, perhaps when the contract they have let and which presently ties them into twelve mows a year come hell or high water comes up for renewal. (One of the many savings which can be attributed to the introduction of large professional buying departments and contracting out to local government).
Back home to the morning's perusal of a back number of the LRB, where I was intrigued by the volume of advertisements for psychoanalytic and creative writing training. Purveyors of such training must know by experience that the readers of LRB are apt to be into that sort of thing. As it happens one of the purveyors is a gang called CFAR (see http://www.cfar.org.uk/), from whom I used to take a magazine. And as it further happens, Mr. Google saw fit to append an advert. for this very same gang to an email I was looking at his morning. Clearly a chap of great knowledge & cunning.
# posted by Jim @ 1:26 AM 
