Conundrum

I've got a problem this morning. I need to find a a suitable plant. Only I'm constrained by professional status and an uncooperative nature.

Each week at Dirleton castle we like to highlight a flowering bloom, one sourced from the world's longest herbaceous border. The flower bed outside my 'office'. Then comparing and contrasting these with another example from the 'wild flowers' that permeate the garden. Some might denigrate them as 'weeds', whilst others, like Henry Theroux have suggested that 'man has yet to find a use for them'. Or as Winnie the Pooh so eloquently noticed: ' weeds are flowers too, once you get to know them'. It's a way of showing that the rocks and mortar of the castle are not alone in having a history and a story to tell. It's also an entre-prompt for a 'garden chat'. By using some archaic language quotes from the medieval herbalists, I get the chance to be provocative and ask the question: "so, is a dandelion a weed?".

Last night I set out to give some thoughts to which plant could be our feature this weekend. So with the pundit sophologists stuck in a groove and given their incessant predictions of 'hung parliaments', I considered extolling Pulmonaria officinalis. Lungwort: "most efficacious for all afflictions of the bronchials". If the accumulated congregation of experts are to be believed, Westminster's great and the good are going to need all the their lung power for the horse trading that might follow. Lungwort, a plant whose leaf is spattered in equal measure with red and blue blotches; it even has, given the unseasonably cold weather, a purple tinge around it's outer edges. I supposed it might be suitably prophetic. Suitably neutral for a property managed by a neutral civil service.

Friday morning dawns to a new political climate. I come into the garden and the colour hues are predominantly yellow: daffodils, spurges and the elecampane inulas....not unusual for early spring. What is unusual, there's a single milk thistle (Silibum marianum) displaying a purple tasseled head. John Gerard in the late 1500s suggests that a ' decoction of it in a posset-drink is vulgarly used as a gentle vomit'. Fortunately the red climbing roses have yet to bud, fortunate, as Dioscorides in AD90 advises ' - is of excellent use in consumptive cases, especially in the spitting of blood'. Our only reds being the Elephant's Lugs and some Bleeding Hearts. For a balancing 'blue', all that I can find are some of the first Knapweeds just opening. Culpeper in 1562 suggested that: 'an infusion in wine be good for those that are broken in falls, blows or otherwise'. The 'otherwise' probably doesn't cover lost deposits. So, probably not best practice to feature any of the these candidates. Which still leaves me with my problem.

So I turn to that other 'faux pas' of the cocktail party, and resort to religion. In the circumstances, it's safer, even if even here there's another trip hazard, with a possible ' double entendre'.

 

 

 

Posted with Blogsy

The Galloping Gaucho

Back in the mid 20s, there was a train that ran from Victoria to Sooke, on the west coast of Vancover Island, that was known locally as the 'Galloping Goose'. A whimsical metaphor for a single carriage gas driven railcar. A short lived contrivance. The ties and rails are all lifted, now the track bed is an attractive trail through the rainforest of the Pacific North-west. I'd forgotten the name until the middle of last night.

We're riding out the last few days of this visit, heading for Bahia Blanca and the rumours of a passanger service to the federal capital. 'Rumours', as the on-line site only shows timetables for trains coming south. One has to assume that there is a return service. Anticipating, planning or even pre- booking are only hostages to fortune. Equinoctial winds had already left us floundering on the verge and doubled the days we had anticipated it could take. Couple that with the unpredictability of the rolling stock.

Argentina once had an extensive network of rail services, one that was, in places, British built. It was, after all too far for your average Hereford stirk to be walked to the port. Search the girders in the station, cross a bridge, walk the line, eventually you'll find the foundry's nameplate. Cardiff, Birmingham, Liverpool, Glasgow. Today, with under-investment much of that network is redundant, rails rusting, culverts collapsing, disappearing under a new generation of vegetation.

Virtually all the passanger traffic now goes by bus. A quicker and more comfortable conveyance. But for us the train has that one major attraction: they're quite happy to take cycles. Not that we need have worried, as we were far from alone; there was even a motorbike on board.

We'd rolled into town mid afternoon, and had taken a turn around by the station. As much to verify its existence and to see if the ticket office would open tomorrow, intending then to go and find a room for the night. Only, ten minutes later the Forager is standing with two tickets for a train that leaves in three hours. More importantly, we're required to present our cycles at the luggage dispatch. Now. What's the rush?

I've ranted too many times about the adrenaline infused angst of negotiating our bikes onto Argentine buses. A frenetic process, as the bus has only a ten minute slot on the stance. Ten minutes to load cargo, passengers, two grumpy gringos with their inconvenience of bicycles, and then depart. We've presented ourselves at the goods depot at the required time, waited half an hour for the official to arrive, another half hour whilst he prepares the paperwork for that motorbike, another ten minutes for a discussion about pre-existing scratches on said bike, then it's our turn.

Leisurely. First hunt for the receipt book. But surely you had it for the last person? It's eventually retrieved from the depths of a stack and to judge by the blue tissue like paper that's fading to buff around it's edges, it hasn't been opened this century. Further evidence of antiquity is offered by the page size and the rail company name. A relic from the age of the imperial sized 'foolscap' and post imperialistic nationalisation. (Argentina officially adopted metric paper sizes in 1948). Are we a rare category of passenger, that we require our own special receipt ledger?

Swapping a handwritten triplicated docket with it's franks of inked stamps for the bikes, we head off to inspect the carriages. The only tickets that were left were for 'Pullman', two grades up from our pervious experience of Argentine rail travel. This superior class comes with arm rests, reclining plastic seats and air conditioning, which would have been desirable just a few days ago, but won't be required tonight. The weather systems are now pulling Antarctic air out of the south. When the falling mercury passes 23°C Porteños don jackets, if it broaches 15°C, hats, scarves and gloves are added. Below 9°C and it's time to hibernate. Conditions perfect for spotting the North European migrants, that have flown south, anticipating an austral summer. Identifying marks include; pasteboard skin, bare knees and goosebumps.

Fair to say the Ferrobaires service to Buenos Aries is not the Orient Express. However I was interested to see what the seating configurations would be; could we contrive some flat sleeping space? But the widows are scratch and grime coated Perspex sheets that have been star-pocked by stone hurlers. So no views inward and as it's an overnight service, no need for views out. Which effectively removes one preceptors sense, the absence of which is compensated for by noise and motion.

A laser-level, arrow-straight six hundred kilometres, with just one slight bend. Which is probably as well, for the Navigator relates how her train set used to shed the end carriage if it went around a bend too fast. The 'wobbling goose'. We're in the end carriage. Fortunately the motion isn't a sway, one to induce seasickness; it is a bounce that resonates and magnifies, until we're stotting like a bouncing ball, down the track. The 'galloping goose' or maybe more appropriately, given the vast flat Pampa that were relentlessly trundling over: 'The Galloping Gaucho'.

 

 

 

 

Posted with Blogsy