Another milestone

On Monday I was seventy. I feel quite pleased that I have made it to my threescore years and ten, but otherwise not much different. I recall my thirteenth birthday and trying to feel different then, but I didn't, nor did I feel different on my 21st. Perhaps this just demonstrates how artificial these milestones are: I rather envy those people who have not counted the years and do not know how old they are. I went down to the Square Metre of course and told it that it was my birthday, but the earth did not shake, it just continued to sit there in its annoying March way. February and March are always the dullest months with the least movement - starvation months when grass and flowers are in short supply and it seems always to be cold. The picture is taken from the place I sit and the fabric on the right hand side is part of my jacket - the shadowy observer altering things like a quantum ghost.

First flowers in 2008

Fittingly for the month when spring begins, two flowers have come out in Emthree. The white ones are wavy bittercress (Cardamine flexuosa) - the whole plant makes a good salad. The other is a half-opened creeping buttercup (Ranunculus repens). This plant is a common weed and often grows in thick masses in damp spots, but it does not seem to like it much in Emthree and usually does not do well. It mostly grows on the earth, but there is one plant trailing across the water in Midsummer Pond like an aquatic.