Below me are the lights of Moscow. I know this is a totally rubbishy photograph but it has a sort of surreal charm and is the best I could do – actually it is an example of our age when we take far too many photographs of things that really do not deserve to be photographed. There is the amazing statistic that we take more photographs every day (or is it every hour?) than were ever taken in the whole history of photography before the digital age. Every so often I sit down and spend an hour or so deleting photographs but still have 32,000 on my telephone. I reckon about 1,000 are precious or interesting, the others are just resting.

I digress, we were in (or rather above) Moscow as the sun sets into the flaming west. Why? well those of you who read this blog relatively regularly will know that for the past six years I have been involved with the Moscow Flower Show (there are Russia based blog posts here, here, here and, if you still have the stamina, here and here) and that time has come around once more so this is what happened….

Wednesday- I got back from Canada (see previous post) yesterday and less than twenty four hours later I am back in a taxi heading to Gatwick, this time in the company of the divine Nina Acton. I am not good company as my brain is a little coddled and slow acting. We eat hummus and get on a plane where I eat dubious chicken and watch Hell or High Water which stars Jeff Bridges and is remarkably good. Films for planes are sometimes difficult to choose as you want something that will divert but will not suffer from being watched on a small screen. Usually I go for light froth – I watched Bridget Jones’ Baby on the way to Canada. It was far too long:when I am elected to be ruler of the universe* my first act will be to pass a law insisting that no film should be longer than ninety minutes. If you can’t say what you need to in that time then you deserve to seven years penal servitude. The same may go for bloggers who do not stick to the point and ramble off about irrelevancies.

We land and get a taxi – eventually after a bit of a wait which allowed us the opportunity to enjoy some enthusiastic horn tooting ** – to a very large Soviet era hotel whose lobby is the size of a domestic aircraft hanger but with extra chandeliers. Bed is welcome.

Thursday – Judging Day. It appears that Nina has taken pity on me as the original plan was for me (and my International Jury) to judge seventy exhibits: gardens large and small, childrens’ gardens, art exhibits and trade stands. Nina will judge the latter and I will stick to gardens.

Judging gardens in Russia is a little different to judging at Chelsea. The criteria are a simplified version of the RHS criteria but the judges tend to wander off mid judging to make telephone calls, greet chums or take photographs of other gardens. I have to be quite fierce and bark at them occasionally but, being Russians, they are quite used to that and respond better to that than any English ‘Excuse me, sorry to bother you but would you mind? So kind, thank you so so much” sort of thing.
It is quite hot and we are interrupted by my having to go and make a speech about the year of ecology at the opening ceremony and then being whisked off to do an interview with Russian television – during my absence my panel wander off and give full marks to a garden that is far from perfect and a silver to one that is really very good. Cue more barking from me – and posing (this photograph is by Andrey Lysikov

Finally we finish at about 9.00 and mooch off and eat things in a largely empty but very beautiful restaurant. Russian restaurants have very comfortable seating – not for them small tables and upright chairs but squishy sofas and deep armchairs. Comfy but sometimes it makes access to the actual food a bit tricky.

Friday: I give a seminar on the trends at RHS shows which is always a bit difficult as they are looking for particular fashions and there aren’t any really so I talk about gardens generally in that strange staccato fashion that is necessary when being interpreted. When we come out the sky is an ominously brooding black which does not look good – a hurricane is forecast so the prize giving (or Solemn Rewarding as it is translated to me) is brought forward a few hours to avoid universal drenching. The problem with this is the medal cards are still being processed so there are gaps between categories. To fill the time we do communal dancing to a slightly dubious version of Super Trooper by ABBA – I dance on stage, they dance in the aisles.

Then the rain comes – it is quite spectacular and is accompanied by gales that whisk the puddles along the ground and rattle the trees. We remove ourselves from a tent and decamp to the rather more solid surrounding of the Museon where there are decent loos and proper coffee. Eventually it clears and I wander back to give feedback to as many gardens as possible – Russian designers love feedback. Almost without exception they take it well and enjoy the critique as they are eager to improve. When I first came here they were all badly planted with lots of gaps and plastic: the gardens are so much better now, although they still build them at the last moment.

We finish just after six and we are off for a treat – we have been given tickets to Il Trovatore at the Helikon Theatre. It has only been open for a couple of years and is in the old coach house of a large mansion once owned by the gloriously named E. Shakhovskaya-Glebova-Streshneva who put on all sorts of musical events in her home up until 1918. It was fabulous – although, like many operas, the story is a bit ridiculous and far fetched. A meeting with the organisers at about 11:30 finishes the day. They have stamina these Russians much more than us soft Brits who are used to being in bed by 10:15.

I fall into bed at about 1:00 with the pleasurable prospect of four hours sleep before the taxi arrives to take me to the airport. Except that this is Moscow and there is an all night rave going on just under my window which is joined in at 4:00 by what sounds like people dropping lengths of scaffolding onto a hard surface and then hitting them with hammers – listen carefully to the video below and you will understand.. Enthusiastically. Incidentally there is also an enormously long queue across the river of people waiting to see a particularly rare relic that is visiting from Italy. Russians are very pious.

Saturday:Airport is Saturday morning chaotic – imagine Luton in holiday season. We muddle through and I go to the executive lounge (which is very crowded) to eat free food of dubious quality and try not to sleep through the departure of my flight.

A short but, as always, eventful and entertaining trip. Next stop Hampton Court, Tatton Park and then no more travels for a while.

I am listening to Time of my Life by the Watson Twins. The main picture is of a baby rabbit in a show garden – eat your heart out Chelsea Flower Show.

*If Donald Trump can do it then I reckon that we all should get a go.

** Horn tooting is something that we British only do in extremis while other nations seem to rejoice in the practice. It seems to me to be remarkably pointless especially in a traffic jam as one has to assume that the people at the front are also trying to leave as soon as possible so horn tooting does not help. It is a futile gesture like appealing to the referee in football matches – he/she is never going to change their mind. Or indeed getting stroppy while receiving feedback at RHS Shows.

I have not written a blog for ages but will makes no apologies as life is like that sometimes and I cannot always think of anything interesting about which I want to write. It would be very dull if I felt an obligation to write stuff and churned out an equivalent of my childhood diary. I think it was called the Letts Schoolboy diary and was full of interesting facts about the countries of the world and their various exports. Some of it sank in – Sierra Leone * exports diamonds, and bauxite for use in the manufacture of aluminium. The Canadian prairie provinces are Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Anyway my point is that you would get quite bored by a string of blogs that said variations on “Irish stew for lunch (yuk) then mucked around” or “nothing much happened” or “played Heatherdown: we won 2-1”.

Instead I am saving things up until the urge takes me which is usually when I am trying to distract myself from something important (but dull) or I am on a train (as I am now). I thought it would be faintly diverting to write about mud as that is a major constituent in my life at the moment. I have a number of jobs under construction and as a result a lot of this year has been spent up to my shins in various grades of mud. This means that I have become a bit of an expert in the subject and my conclusions are that no matter where the mud is situated – be it in Wiltshire, Northamptonshire or Buckinghamshire (which are the locations of my largest mud piles) – is is always annoyingly muddy.

Buckinghamshire

This may lack the edge of pioneering science that some of you might expect from me but it does back up a number of historic theories. In the Middle Ages everything was muddy from people and animals to bedding and cookware. It was unavoidable due to the lack of tarmac roads and the fact that nobody had yet invented the coir doormat. Nowadays we are spoilt in that we can walk from our houses onto dry, mud free pavements and not have to worry about getting topsoil out of our underwear.

Northamptonshire

Other conclusions that I have drawn include:

Building site mud is very unlike the sort of mud one is likely to find in facial mud packs. That mud is the colour of chocolate and the texture of peanut butter: it does not smell of mould or diesel like site mud does.

Wiltshire

The Hippopotami who sang “follow me follow, down to the hollow and there let us wallow in glooooorious mud” were also thinking of a completely different calibre of mud.

No matter how careful you may be you will always get mud on your trousers – often a loose splattering that looks as if it has been flicked at you.

Derbyshire

So that is what I have learned. Underneath the mud, however, interesting things are happening and some fine and handsome gardens are likely to eventually emerge. I look forward to sharing them with you over the next couple of years as they gradually come into their own. In the meantime I will continue to slosh about in the goo, happy as Larry**

I am listening to The Ballad of Ira Hayes by Johnny Cash. The picture is of a daffodil field in Cornwall – lest we forget that spring is coming.

* Sierra Leone, incidentally was the answer to a question that marks one of my greatest achievements (and greatest disappointments). Years ago I was on Celebrity Eggheads and beat CJ (the one who may have murdered somebody by pushing them into a canal) with a question whose answer was Sierra Leone.

** Larry, for those of you who ever wondered is the Australian boxer Larry Foley who, 1879, retired undefeated at 32 having banked a decent wedge. Thus he was deemed to be pretty content with his lot.

More than a month since I last wrote this blog. Ooops.

Odd how sometimes one has lots to say and other times the conversation dries up a bit and we lapse into a convivial silence for a bit. I then worry that I should be blogging while you sit back and enjoy the peace.

I also have a mild problem in that (whispers) this is not the only blog I write and sometimes one of the others snaffles the ideas. Yes, I am a blog bigamist, I am faithless and feeble of will, I will chase after any old blog shaped skirt that winks at me to the detriment of this old and faithful thing. Unspeakable and caddish behaviour but, in my defence, (which is a pathetic defence) I am going through a mid life blog crisis and will attempt to mend my ways.

At times like this I think the snappy checklist school of blogging is what is called for: in no particular order except the order in which they tumble from my head.

1. Last month was the Garden Media Guild Awards at which I won nothing although the sibling of this blog (see above – the use of the word sibling makes my unfaithfulness somehow worse) was shortlisted. I fear that there may be a drift away from self-indulgent nonsense blogging towards fact and useful stuff about gardening. Such is the way of the world.

2. Chelsea Press Launch. On the same day I compered the press launch for Chelsea Flower Show 2013. It was in the Connaught Hotel (thanks to the kindness of M&G) where each person was provided with a little tin of mints: to be perfectly accurate two tins of mints: one from M&G and one from the Connaught. Small tins of mints are obviously the absolute bees-knees of corporate gifting.

3. I returned to the Connaught after the GMG Awards thing. Many repaired to the pub, some hastened home and others simply lay down in the nearest doorway and slept. I thought that what the afternoon demanded was not a hot, sweaty and loud pub but ridiculously expensive cakes and small sandwiches to the sound of a harpist. We were an exclusive and generally delicious band of cake eaters – The Connaught has an exquisite entrance with a narrow revolving door. A proper one with brushes on the floor and room for no more than one person at a time.

4. I drove to Devon in the worst of the rain. Usually I am sweetness and light to my fellow man, always happy to give the benefit of the doubt and lend an umbrella to a stranger (i) but the odd moment of schadenfreude is always satisfying. Picture this: early morning, skiddy roads, grey skies, rain and general dullness. Everybody trundling along carefully avoiding accidents and driving too quickly through large puddles lest we soak pedestrians. Everybody? no, not everybody one person (sex unknown but the smart money is on male) in a low slung BMW is driving like a jerk. Swinging around, overtaking badly, all that stuff. We approach a large flood. I drive in, he drives in behind me. I drive out…….. Oh dear. I am alone.

5. Lectures: I seem to have given a load of lectures over the past month or so – at one I was described as “not as buff as Chris Beardshaw” which as good a thing as any to have as an epitaph. I know my place and I no longer have buttocks so taut you could bounce 2p pieces off them.

6. I have a newish car. I am unnecessarily thrilled by the little extras and left cold by the important bits. The engine size, mileage per gallon or resale value is of very little interest to me. I am, however, very excited by the fact that my telephone plugs into a little USB thing in the glovebox. That there is a button that shuts the boot automatically. That something beeps when I reverse anywhere near any solid objects – the closer you get, the more frantic the beep, this is particularly useful to avoid incidents such as this. All this and an entire picnic table in the back seat which I will never use.

7. I have laid out a lot of plants in various parts of the country. Sometimes in truly horrid weather. I have got an interesting project in Sussex at a garden called Borde Hill. We have just replanted a narrow border which is romantically named Paradise Walk. It has been stripped and replanted with a spatter of herbaceous stuff. There are Monardas, Kniphofias, Zizias, Geranium Rozanne and many other jolly things. I would show you a picture except that a patch of mud covered wityh pots is not a terribly inspiring sight. Instead I urge you to visit Borde Hill next summer and see for yourselves.

8. That is probably enough for the moment, other things have happened but if I tell you everything you will never get round to eating poultry and flatulent vegetables.

Next time I blog there will be a new Episode of intoGardens in the App store. It is a thing of extreme beauty and deserves to be seen by every iPad owner in the world. My problem is that I do not know all of them so would very much appreciate any help you might be inclined to shovel my way. Spread the word please, people and I will be forever in your thrall.

I am listening to a slightly stroppy ticket collector on the Euston-Manchester train. The picture is of the window of Scott’s Restaurant in Mount Street looking festive.

Happy Christmas to all and thank you for reading my tosh once again.

(i) This may be the reason why I have no umbrellas

I have recently returned from giving lectures in Canada and the USA and thought that I would amuse myself by subjecting you to my mini-memoirs of the experience.

It is quite like being subjected to my holiday snaps except that I am not there so you can slope off without my noticing. The story begins on Day Two – day one consisting almost exclusively of travel by car and aeroplane. I cannot remember which films I watched on the flight but I know they were quite rubbishy. One of them had Jennifer Anniston in small shorts.

Thursday:

8:00am:I am writing this from the Holiday Inn Express in Spokane, Washington. It is quite sunny this morning and I have just eaten a warm sugary doughnut for breakfast – as a result I feel slightly buzzy and have nascent toothache. This combined with jet lag is an interesting combination.

3:00 pm: I have been whisked round the city by the extraordinarily eccentric (but equally extraordinarily charming) Meyer sisters (well, two thirds of the available collection) we have seen parks, undulating wheat fields, vineries, exterior dance floors,a conservatory and, the piece de resistance, the House of Meyer. This is an unassuming suburban house made notable by the addition of some breathtaking Halloween decorations and a large crane in the driveway. Halloween is a weird celebration and Americans take it very seriously: the hotel was covered in fake cobwebbery and there were themed parties (all this three weeks before the actual date). The Meyers take it one step further and have talking witch shaped automatons and a village of miniature electric models full of ghosts and skeletons. They get through an awful lot of sweets at trick or treat time.

10:00 pm: Back again having eaten a strange pizza that was crimped and folded so it looked like a Cornish Pasty and delivered a lecture to the well attended monthly meeting of the Inland Empire Gardeners. Seemed to go very well in that nobody threw anything. There was cake (i) as well as a treasurer wearing a very snappy leather kilt.

Friday:

9:00 am: Back in Spokane airport after a surprisingly weird breakfast consisting of a piece of round bacon and an omelette the colour and texture of a post-it note. Bought some grapes.

12:30 pm: I am boarding a bus. A rather well appointed bus with squashy seats and wi-fi. I have not been on a bus for ages. I used to travel by National Express when I was younger, it was never like this. Plastic seats and I usually ended up asleep and dribbling on my neighbour’s shoulder. I am here because I thought that if I flew to Vancouver I would see nothing. This way I get to see some trees, some water, a good slice of landscape and a lot of freeway. I am finding it rather delightful even though the skies are smoky grey and it drizzles.I passed a place called Chuckanut which amused me more than perhaps it should.

4:30 pm: Canadian Border. Had a long chat with the Immigration Officer about gardens. So much so that he forgot to stamp my passport and had to call me back. I feared it was a Gordon Jackson moment (ii) and I was going to be slammed in the slammer for some reason.

17:30 pm: Based on the scientific study I have carried out over the past hour it rains more in Canada than in the U.S. This may or may not be the result of global warming. Perhaps.

10:00 pm: Back in the hotel after eating a lobster. Tomorrow I must work.

Saturday:

9:00 am: Two talks to fabulous people from the Vancouver Hardy Plant Group in a comfortable theatre under a museum. It is still raining: which is good as if it was sunny and we were all stuck in a dark room then we would be disgruntled. Lunch was a sandwich of lamb and pear in bread studded with figs. Very jolly indeed.

3:00 pm: emerge, blinking to find the rain stopped and a glimmer of blue in the sky. Hurrah. Time for a swift visit to two gardens, some sea viewing and to realise than Vancouver is a very charming city before the rain starts again. Dinner was fun.

Sunday:

9:00 am: This is serious rain. I thought that we were kings of precipitation but we are not. I bow my head in humble acknowledgement that this is serious soak-you-in-double-quick-time rain. My theory is that each raindrop is approximately 25% larger than a British raindrop. Ergo the rain is wetter. I am waiting for the ferry to Victoria.The sea and sky are pretty grey which is a great pity as I was expecting spectacular views, autumn trees and possibly a few frolicking whales. There was conversation yesterday about high winds preventing the ferries from running. “It’s okay though, you can always take seaplane”. I don’t know about you but, if the wind is lively and when given the choice between big chunky ferry and small seaplane my choice would be with the former. Apparently not. I seek reassurance – “Most of the seaplanes get there okay” I am told. “But it might be quite bumpy”.

I do not like bumpy.

Bumpy is my idea of hell. Mind you so is nautical choppiness. My family has quite a long history of seafaring: we have salty sea dogs as ancestors. My great grandfather (a WW1 Cruiser Captain, later Admiral) was described in a book about the Battle of Jutland as having a face “like a scrubbed hammock”. I have missed the sea-going gene.

10:30 Many Canadians have rugged cases for their iPhones. Perhaps because of earthquakes.

12:18 pm: I have been on deck for the sake of research. I have used the opportunity to take some fine pictures of foggy islands for your amusement. I can now barely see properly as my specs are rained over. No whales but there is a large television over there showing an American Football game. One team is wearing neon pink spats with matching pink handkerchiefs dangling from the waistbands of their trousers.

3:00 pm: I have been whisked, via a sandwich, to the Salvation Army Hall in Victoria. Somebody’s car has caught fire in the parking lot and a man has just asked me if I was the Reverend in charge. The two events were not, I believe, connected as the man did not seem to be in search of absolution but you never know.

5:00 pm: I have delivered my fourth and final lecture of the mini-tour, as an added bonus I met a longtime commenter on this blog who I did not know was (a) Canadian (b) present in the audience (c) smiley (d) female. Nice to put a face to a nom de plume.
It is still raining.

10:00 pm:I have done two things this evening: I have eaten a large steak and have noticed that Canadian light switches work in the opposite direction to ours: on is down rather than up. I wonder why.

Monday:

9:00am: Typical. The sun is shining. I have just eaten a muffin of indeterminate ingredients for breakfast. I decided against the shiny hard boiled eggs. A peeled and naked cold egg can be a bit off putting. Mind you not many things look that appetising peeled, naked and cold. I am now going to see some gardens about which I will write on another day. I like to think that I know when my readers are at the end of their tether. Here is a decorative bin from Butchart gardens to whet your appetites.
It has all been very marvellous. Everybody has been a delight, I love lecturing over here.

Maybe someday I will get asked back.

I am now returned and am listening to Metal Heart by Cat Power.

Sylvia Kristel died the other day: my goodness she was beautiful. I was, I’m afraid, one of the many adolescents whose hormones she fuelled in the 1970s, I went to see Emmanuelle with a friend of mine when we were fifteen. Very young looking fifteen year-olds wearing ties. It was in the Prince Charles Cinema just off Leicester Square and we blagged our way into the afternoon performance. She had a tough time, very sad.

The picture is of some lettuce.
(i) American cake is different to British cake. Somehow it has more air in it, presumably this is something to do with the wide open spaces where buffalo roam etc etc
(ii) Classic Great Escape moment. You remember. Gordon Jackson and Richard Attenborough getting on the bus. All papers inspected. Gestapo officer as a parting shot says “Gut Luck”. Jackson turns and says “Thank you very much”. Bang. That’s it. Next scene they are all mown down in a field by a machine gun on the back of a truck. Moral: Manners can sometimes be a bad idea.

I have been garden visiting.
In fact, not only have I been garden visiting but I have done it in the pouring rain in the company of my young friend (and eminent Editor) Christopher Young. This is something we do too infrequently. It gives us the chance to be wildly indiscreet while in the open air and therefore less likely to be overheard while, at the same time, looking at interesting gardens.

The thing we seem unable to get right is the weather. Last time we went to look at Kim Wilkie’s Orpheus in the depths of winter, this time we went to Easton Walled Gardens
in a torrential downpour. Fortunately we were provided with large umbrellas by Ursula Cholmeley (who is, as you probably know, the brains behind the outfit). She also gave us a bit of a guided tour.Here is Ursula and the young editor dripping colourfully.


The gardens span a very pretty valley in Lincolnshire and used to belong to a stately pile which was, as were so many large houses, demolished in the early 1950s. It was all about post-war austerity and lack of domestic staff. When Ursula and Fred arrived in 1994 it was a sprawling mass of overgrowth and mess. The only building remaining was a very handsome gatehouse (which now contains the necessary shops and tearooms etc) which was only saved from demolition because the designated bulldozer ran out of diesel at the crucial moment.

It is an effectively simple layout: a series of steep terraces tumbling down to the river. A handsome bridge across said river and then a walled garden going up the other side. Ursula is big on meadows: wildflower meadows on the steep parts of the terraces and grassy meadows studded with fruit trees and roses in the walled garden. This is most effective: the flowery bits on the terraces are brilliant as you are eye to eye with cranesbills and burnets and all that stuff. Longer stuff on steep bits is always sensible as then there is less annoying mowing: at that angle mowing usually involves a Flymo on a rope. Mind you, I have no idea whether Flymos still exist? Or are they considered too dangerous? They certainly injected a bit of jeapordy into gardening:I used to have two large petrol driven Flymos. For some reason only one of them ever worked reliably but the problem was that you did not know which from one day to the next. They rejoiced in their rebellious inconsistencies.

The roses in the walled garden are groups of rugosas and something else trained rather beautifully on wasp waisted supports. Elsewhere are sublimely patterned railings, little lodges and specially grafted local fruit trees.

All in all a rather magnificent bit of work- even in the rain. There is also a very neat vegetable garden,a fine collection of very happy sweet peas and various other borders full of flowers for picking and general herbaceous wondrousnesses. In particular some pale yellow lupins: I always forget about Lupins which is a pity as they are handsome plants in the right place. Provided they don’t get carried away. Same with Irises, they are unutterably gorgeous in their simpler forms but when then start getting idées au dessus de leur gare (ii) then they quickly lose their appeal. In particular the Cayeux irises which I find very hard to love.

If I was to pick a bit I worry that without a house a garden always seems a little aimless. The area right next to the gatehouse lacks a bit of oomph. There are two hedged gardens (presumably for the people who live in the gatehouse) which is perfectly understandable but takes away from the initial impact of walking through the arch into the garden. I would like a bit more of a tarant-ta-ra moment as the site definitely deserves one.

Another site which lacks a fanfary entrance is the NEC Birmingham (iii) which is my home until Sunday night for I am on frolicking duty at Gardeners’ World Live. All the requisite Garden Slebs will pass through my hands twist now and then, the fact that I am already losing my voice, however, doth not bode well.

The picture is of a Honeysuckle. I am listening to the bass line of a band doing a soundcheck in a nearby arena.

(i) I once had a magnificent umbrella which was a conventional black but had a really fine pointy end. This meant that not only could one deliver a very effective prod to anybody who deserved prodding but it also made a very satisfactory javelin which stuck, quivering, into the ground. It was a very respectable looking offensive weapon. Eventually some bastard stole it and the one I stole to replace it was much more health and safety conscious. There used to be strange rules about tightly furled umbrellas and officers from the Brigade of Guards the exact details of which are unclear to me. On that subject Guards officers were also not allowed to be seen to carry parcels, even when not in uniform.

(ii) I think this is from French Without Tears, a play by Terence Rattigan set in a school teaching French to businessmen. There are many misquotations and pidgin Frenchness. I saw it ages ago but for some reason that phrase has lodged in my brain.

(iii) The similarities, I hasten to add, end there.

Today must qualify as one of the most miserable January days ever – unutterably grey and drizzly. It must have been quite like this inside a medieval dungeon at midsummer. Anyway, apart from such ungovernable forces,life is good.

Steve Cockell (who has built many gardens for me) is extending the terrace by the kitchen door and I am about to buy some lights to make it look like a runway. Too dull to describe in detail but I will put photographs up at some point. Things to look forward to today – Geoffrey Arblaster (digs lakes, knows everything about excavations, talks a lot) is coming over to talk septic tanks this afternoon.

Sounds dreary but, actually, I find drains fascinating – I rather enjoy unblocking them especially leaf clogged downpipes. There is something excruciatingly pleasurable about plunging a hand into freezing cold water and unutterably satisfying in hearing that gurgling as the blockage is cleared and water cascades away. Then there is that moment when your hand looks like a dead fish – pasty and flecked with decaying leaf – followed by pins and needles as circulation returns.

Enough slightly disturbing confessions. Picture of dripping Stipa gigantea.