Flowering Red Currant with an Unfortunate Cat Connection

An asparagus that thinks it’s a grape

This shrub above is flowering in the hedge. It’s a Flowering Red Currant. I remember risking life and limb when I was quite small to get some of these flowers for my mother, and proudly carrying them home to her.

Only to be told by a neighbour, before I got home, that they were called: ‘cat’s p*ss’ because they stank of it, and maybe my mother might not like them …

Oh.

I have made a point of never breathing in near them so I don’t know the real truth of it, but there are some growing in my hedge. And they look pretty.

I have a Skimmia japonica shrub outside the front of the house with an incredible fragrance (that doesn’t smell of anything unwelcome). It just keeps growing and I haven’t the faintest idea where it’s rooted itself — I’m not going to investigate — I think it must have spread its root system into next door.

They’re welcome to come round and have a sniff of it, though. It’s only fair.

This is a delightful plant with fab blue flowers — it’s growing really enthusiastically all over the rockery. I remember building that rockery years ago and inhabiting it with twenty different types of specialised plants.

This is the only remaining one. It’s survival of the fittest, I guess. I consider myself lucky any of them have survived, such is the neglect this poor garden has experienced.

Although known as grape hyacinth, this flower is considered a member of the asparagus family. It’s springing up all around the neighbourhood.

It was St Patrick’s Day on 17th March — I hope you all had — and have — the luck of the Irish.

Happy St Patrick’s Day from Shaun and the flock! Will you be dancing your hooves off — YouTube — fab little video of Shaun and pals line-dancing.

PupperJack looked up through the red-tipped Photinia to the blue-blue sky above; he sniffed around the celandines, all open-faced on what used to laughingly be called the lawn, and he decided it was summer already.

So he sat in the sun soaking up the warmth until he got too hot and had to be carried indoors to lie on a cold tile floor. Daft doggo.

Talking of different types of perfume — 21st March is ‘National Fragrance Day ‘— illustrated above by ‘La Pawfumerie’ in which our doggo — let’s call her, Chanel — is woofing to her potential customer-canine: “Pong from Paris, or Eau de Stagnant, Madam?”

(Anydog who is anydog needs to get their rolling-in-scent from a pawfumerie of repute.)

“Roosevelt called them “the lungs of the Earth,” Robert Frost and millions of poets were inspired by them, and Sting is fighting to save them. We’re talking about forests.”

March 21st is also ‘International Day of Forests’.

Dennett started the Photo-a-Day Challenge to help combat the pandemic blues. I’m delighted that she is continuing to do so despite Medium’s sabotage of our picture liberties.

Other practitioners who share their week with us:

Erika Burkhalter, Anne Bonfert, Tracy Aston, Lisa Bolin, Juan O. Aguilera, David Wade Chambers, June Nguyen, Mia Verita, LensAfield, Barbara Radisavljevic, Diana Lotti, Barb Dalton, Kim Zuch, K. Barrett, Penny Grubb, Ellie Jacobson, Shruthi Sundaram

(If your name should, or should not, be on this list, please let me know.)

Susan’s Amazon Page / Susan’s Etsy Store/ newsletter sign-up

Read more from me: © Susan Alison 2022