Fifteen minutes of fame

Another dull and dreary day today and though I went out with the camera later in the afternoon I was not inspired, and came back to conjure up an emergency Blip! Here goes!

Back in the mid-1990s I was approached by a botanical artist named Marianna Kneller who had for some time been the 'artist in residence' at Exbury gardens in Hampshire, home of the Rothschild rhododendrons - and some of the Rothschilds too, of course!

She was preparing a book on rhododendron species and was looking for people to write a page on each of the subsections, to accompany her watercolours.

I have no idea why she asked me - when I later saw the list of well-known authorities on the genus who had written pages I felt rather a fraud! We agreed that I would write a page on the subsection Parishia, which group we had at Arduaine as part of our rhododendron collection.

She had a copy of the book sent to me and later gave me a note of thanks to stick in the front. I haven't looked at the book for a while until today, but it's one of my treasured possessions!