Things Fall Apart

How fleeting this dainty time of year
When succession slips through all his gear.
The north wind never blew so loud;
The sun that shrank behind her shroud;
And time stood still his beating heart,
That things themselves might fall apart.

Doggerel by name and doggerel by nature.

Many thanks to blipper bignonioides (check his lovely bird photos) who identified yesterday's plant as Parietaria judaica. It's known in English as pellitory-of-the-wall and is a member of the urtica (nettle) family and in Australia is known  as the Asthma plant - apparently the pollen is very allergenic. You can see here a member of the Sydney Weed Committee dealing with energetic weed.

I've not had any reaction to it (the pellitory, that is) but I've always had a sense that it might be poisonous in some way. Only seems to like the really dry area on the chalk bank in the garden even though it is prone to spread by its sticky seeds.

I spent the day going back to Arctic Norway, so to speak, and adding some more words and photographs and links to my web pages there. Those Lyngen Alps really do kick some. See here for my musings and photos from last year. Also had a nice tweet from the bloke who wrote the book on the Second World War Nazi destruction of northern Norway.

The photo is of one of those fast disappearing Tree Peony blossoms.