Nothing to See Here

It's hard to photograph a smell - I saw someone write that in their journal this week, and here's a good example. We planted this balsam poplar so long ago that I have forgotten - ten years, maybe fifteen. I remember I picked it on the back of a spontaneous eulogy to its amazing smell that was delivered on one of the radio gardening programmes: a panel member in a Q&A format who had probably been answering questions in his rich regional accent for 30 years. He drifted off into a semi-meditative state as he tried to describe how overwhelming he found the smell on a still warm day

I found a web site that says it is a significant timber tree in North America, but "In Europe, it has no special importance"! No eulogy from them, then. The same web site says that it is the leaves that smell of balsam, which I think is not the case. In fact it is the resinous buds - somewhat like the "sticky buds" of horse chestnut - that deliver the smell, and the warm days we have had have brought them on, so the lovely warm smell was wafting around the trees this evening

A more reliable web site said that the resin is collected by bees, which I had never realised. It does now dawn on me, though, that our colonies here do have a balsam-like smell. How slow of me never to put two and two together. Bees collect resin in order to mix it with wax and enzymes to create propolis - the rather magical material with which they fill gaps in the hive, stick things together and line the empty cell in the comb after each new bee has emerged, slowly making the comb darker and darker as the generations pass. Propolis is sticky and pliable at warm temperatures. When cold, it becomes hard and brittle, and can be chipped or shattered like bakelite to remove it from equipment. Like the resin itself, it is resistant to the growth of potentially harmful funghi and bacteria

We decry our politicians for their dishonesty, their defence of narrow class interests, their divisiveness, and their appeal to all the worst instincts of their electors, as well as many other faults. Quite right too. Today, however, Putin made a speech - you can read about it on line or in the press. In all probability you can find someone in US or Europe defending what he said, and read their words too, if you want to. Later in the day Biden made a speech. Almost no-one in Russia will read what he said, and anyone caught trying to do so will be punished. Our democracies are deeply flawed, under strain and threatened, but I still think we retain something worth fighting for