Are yours droopy or erect?

Especially for TMLHereAndThere

Here are some more words you wouldn't necessarily associate with bluebells!

(Following her comment on my blip from Sunday: Beautiful - loving all the bluebell blips at the moment. This is the first one that has included the words 'waterproof trousers' and 'effing'.)

Flaccid or turgid?

Floppy or stiff?



The Bluebell (Hyacinthoides non-scripta) , our native plant, on the right, has darker flowers to one side of the stem, which tends to droop, longer curved petals and obvious white pollen.

The Spanish Bluebell, on the left, is a foreign invader. (Hyacinthoides hispanica.) It has paler flowers set all round the upright stem and blue pollen. The flowers are bigger and the leaves are broader. They are more commonly found planted in gardens.

The Spanish Bluebells bastardise our native plants through cross pollination, to produce Hyacinthoides x massartiana, which threatens the native population, as they escape into the wild as seeds and bulbs.

If, like me you have Spanish bluebells growing in your garden, and you are near a bluebell wood you should dig them up and destroy them, which is what I have been doing over the past couple of years, yet still they appear at this time of year.


Today has been the best of days.
I had a very fruitful business lunch, which has left me highly motivated followed by a wonderful evening out for dinner with 'Sugar Daddy', and his chum 'Sexy Rexy'. Both aged 82 and the best company you could imagine!!

Rex, aka 'Sexy Rexy ' rode in the Grand National 7 times back in his heyday (amongst other things) and has so many stories to tell.

The only down side was the restaurant was very noisy, so the two old boys couldn't hear each other I had to act as go between or mediator, much to the amusement of the diners at neighbouring tables.

I particularly enjoyed Rex's story of going to Paris on the 'Space shuttle'.
I assume he meant Eurostar!

Don't forget to seek out the blue invaders and exterminate them!!