Potentilla fruticosa

A good service at church this morning, with hymns very relevant to the theme of the gospel reading and the sermon (I’m back on the music team which chooses the hymns, so I might be a bit biased). It was the story of Jesus sleeping calmly through the storm on the fishing boat while the disciples panicked. My friend Sue has been licensed to preach, and this was her first sermon. As she spoke about our faith being the calm in the life storms we must all inevitably endure, I realised exactly how I have coped with such a rough and unsettling time since Mum died 18 months ago. Having suffered serious breakdowns during past crisis points in my life, I am certain that I would have had another one this time were it not for my strong Christian faith and the way it grounds and centres me. As Mum used to say, it’s something stable and reliable to hang onto.

I was up ‘til midnight last night finishing off the unwrapping of my books and arranging them on the new bookshelves. This afternoon there was a sea of cardboard to tear up and put into a recycling bag ready for the collection on Tuesday morning. I’ve also got three black bin bags full of polystyrene and other packaging to take to the tip. I’ve even managed to fit in some deadheading and a perfunctory tidy up of the front garden today, so I am absolutely dead beat this evening!

My blip is a Potentilla fruticosa, which is the old-fashioned name for what is widely known as Dasiphora fruticosa (subsp. fruticosa), or shrubby cinquefoil. It’s always been in the back garden, but never seems to do all that well despite being a hardy plant. Might have something to do with the multitude of weeds swamping it…