Not.....

..... a flower.

This is one of the numerous arums that are currently popping up in my tiny back garden. My back garden is north facing and predominantly planted up with green foliage woodland type plants ( ramsons, helibours, wood anemones etc ). Although this looks like a flower it is infact a spandix and spathe. The spathe is an adapted leaf that covers tiny little flowers that hide at the base of the spandix.

I grow a few species of arum, all of which produce a smell of rotting flesh to various degrees. I'm not sure exactly what species this one is as I was given it by my friend 'fat Jason'. I had given fat Jason a hand to move home last year and pointed out that the bright red berries on the arums in his new back garden are poisonous if eaten, he dug them up straight away and gave them to me as he was worried his young daughter may try eating them ( I think she must have inherited his tendancy to eat anything and everything that looks vaguely like food ;-) ).

This evening I will be running the third of this years HDSRL races. One of my friends who was at my cake night yesterday was due to be running it with me, but is instead ( after a routine unrelated scan a week or so ago ) having to go in to hospital today to have yet another piece of his insides removed. The ammount of operations he has had over the years it may be easier for the surgeons to just install a zip up his back and turn him in to some sort of novelty pyjama case. Despite being older than either of my parents he has the youngest soul of any of my friends. Why does life often hand the shitty end of the stick to some of the nicest people ?

This is a very early blip for me. This evening I will be running the race for someone else and as my mind will be elsewhere for the rest of the day, todays blip is .....


..... Not a flower.