Poor rosemary

Its Gone.




My poor, sad shrivelled Rosemary is gone.
Once lush and fragrant, it withered and shrank, dusty and dead.

This is the space where once it was.

Click here
for the sad story of the Rosemary beetles and how they ravaged and decimated my rosemary bush.
These pictures are rather small because they are so sad. Click to enlarge if you must.


I decided I couldn't face another spring/summer of squishing the shiny little fellows, particularly as they'd probably just be back again next year. My purple sage is also at risk, I found a couple of rosemary beetles chomping away on that. They are also partial at times, to thyme apparently.

So, its gone.

I will restrain myself from lengthy reflections on the symbolic/metaphorical significance of rosemary (mentioned in my earlier blog, and see
this blog
for a poignant piece of writing about rosemary). Suffice it to say that the roots were surprisingly deep and hard to shift, this was an extremely tough and tenacious plant which didn't want to move - hanging on for dear life it was. It became pitifully wrenched and dismembered in the process, which involved much sweating and an aching back.

It is now in a black bag in the wheelie bin.

However - I did find one stem which had already begun to root itself in the soil - with a little care and attention, this should flourish and grow. There will still be rosemary in my garden.

Its that dearest freshness deep down things again. RW was asking where that was from, its one of my favourite poems - God's Grandeur, by Gerard Manley Hopkins, written towards the end of the nineteenth century - so I will quote it in full:

The world is charged with the grandeur of God
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is bleared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares his smell: the earth
Is bare now, nor can foot feel being shod.

And for all that, Nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastwards, springs -
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

This really needs to be read aloud to feel the rhythm and cadences. Go on - read it to yourself or whoever is with you!

And whilst on the theme of the dearest freshness of Nature,
here are the latest pictures of the camelia, and the magnolia,
both just down the road from us - almost in glorious full bloom now, defying the
(mostly) cold and rainy weather (f***ng rain!):









Nothing more on the subject of slugs, except this - Dillo No. 23. I can't think why it didn't occur to me to include this with my previous post, it is so very slug-like. And I have to admit I have never really liked it, but no doubt Trac and Betty will find it rather attractive.