Wet Hellebore.

I awoke to find two inches of snow in the garden and it’s been sleeting or raining all day until after tea.

I like to take part in the challenges but Flower Friday can be a little difficult to fit in with our domestic schedule. We have quite a few hellebores in the garden, some of them are quite attractive and their flowers last a long time so this variety is having a repeat performance in my journal. I was rather miffed, about 18 months ago, when I entered my first photo competition for forty years when the judge, having announced that he was an expert in flower photography, derided a flower of mine, in a similar condition to this one, as being “battered by the rain.” He wasn’t aware that many flowers hang their heads and close up in wet weather to protect their pollen and nectar from the rain. Hellebores seem to have evolved in Scotland as they permanently adopt this apparently submissive posture. He couldn’t recognize a honeybee either.
Thanks are due to our FlowerFriday host this week: BikerBear.


I took Merlin back to the vet today, the poor old chap’s pain killers aren’t cutting the mustard any longer so he’s been put onto tramadol. May all his dreams be happy ones. Apparently, the drug is not registered for dog use, so I’m surprised the vet is allowed to issue it. There is a similar issue with oxalic acid, one of the best treatments for bee mites. For the last twenty years we’ve been using it to clean hives but forgetting to take the bees out first; now it has been registered as a medicinal drug at ten times the price so the canny Scottish beekeepers are still buying it as a cleansing agent.


I’ve just posted Wednesday’s “Snow on the Pentlands."