Beautiful Birch ....

Well BlipFolk, the news is in, and it's not good. Seems the Big C is intent on paying me another visit. What an unwelcome guest! He won't take no for an answer though, just have to take my time getting rid of him and enlist all the help I can muster to turf him out. Again. In the last few days I've been through disbelief, anger, sadness and terror by turn, all things I didn't have time for the first time, when the diagnosis was sudden, unexpected and very urgent. This time, hopefully, we have caught the little b....... early and will kick his butt good and proper. I might not get around to blipping or commenting so much at times, see how we progress. But I refuse to let my life be taken over ...

We nearly got stuck in the snow and ice on the way to the hospital last night. Snow had drifted in great sculptures across the A286 and the road was frozen. Cars were everywhere on the verges, in ditches.

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Today we had some welcome sunshine and the countryside is glorious. This is a beautiful birch, Betula Jacquemontii, with wonderful white papery bark. Really lights up in the sunshine. In Gaelic, birch is Beith, and is connected with Tir nan Og, that mysterious place in the West where spirits go after death, and is also connected to fairies. Also a symbol of fertility. It has many uses for us, perhaps the most well known being as the birch meaning scourge for wrong doers. In medieval times a bunch would be carried by the magistrate on the way to court, as a symbol of his authority and maybe he switched the unwary as he went. One of my favourite trees.