Earthy grounding

The morning after the terrorist attack at Manchester Arena two lines from Tennyson's poem Tears, Idle Tears kept repeating themselves in my head:

Tears from the depth of some Divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes.

The poet says he knows not what the "idle tears" mean but I knew what mine meant: deep anguish and sympathy for what the families of the killed and injured must be suffering today and for many days to come. People driven to acts of such violence by mad ideologies are deluded.

People are saying that we need to do something in addition to just carrying on as normal, but certainly normal, or as normal as you can, is grounding. The gap I cut through the azaleas on the front bank was ready to be widened so I went at it with the hedge-cutter. Along the way I found myself talking to three tiny oak seedlings just erupting from their acorns: "You can't grow here, little tree. Not right under the big birch tree and so close to the house."

NW end of front bank with birch tree
and a gateway I've cut through the rhododendron hedge

It always feels sad to have to pull out little trees (well, not ash and sycamore! They are just weeds round here) but there are at least three more young oaks near the top of the garden where there is room for them to grow. Two of them are now taller than me and one actually produced two or three acorns last year.

I needed a nap after my gap-widening efforts but went out again afterwards to dig up some dock plants at the bottom of the same front bank. With the dock roots up came some of the creeping rhizomes of Sharp-flowered Rush that also grows down there. My hands got damply earthy but as they dried and even with soil on them, they felt clean in a smooth and quite different way from newly washed hands. This was the 'grounding' I needed after today's sad news. Perhaps it is something to do with being reminded that we are with the earth and of it, dust to dust, stardust even as Carl Sagan said.

Between the dock and rush patch and the drive hedge I found what I think is a Northern Marsh Orchid in pretty much the same place as there was one last year. Previously our single Southern Marsh Orchid, which grows at the top of the bank, has reappeared in the same spot for several years but the Northern Marsh Orchids, of which there are usually a few dotted about, always seem to come up in different places each year. It would be nice to think this one now has an established root. I marked where it is with a stick and a bit of ribbon so that it doesn't get any more trampled than it already is!

Orchid marker near the hedge

At the lower end of that hedge is my young hawthorn tree. It has flowered for the first time this year. Its parent is beyond on the far side of the lane. Massed ivy growth has weighed down its trunk to almost horizontal but it is thriving still. The light you can see beyond the trees is the loch. There are some houses down there before it but the drop from the hawthorn down to them is very steep so we look over their roofs.

I have two small hawthorns in pots to give to a friend. They were recently moved to the porch because, guess what!, the deer nibbled their tops. They are doing fine.