The flowers of December

Having a nice day doing too much jigsaw(!) and watching the birds in my garden. Ms GS woodpecker eats so much suet from the half coconut I’m worried that soon she might not be able to fly. Luckily she has terrible table manners, so lots of suet falls to the ground for the blackbirds.
I made myself go out for a walk although it was dark grey and very damp and chilly feeling. Almost straight away I saw some blackberry flowers, then some honeysuckle. Some yellow winter jasmine in a neighbour’s garden. Then I walked into the city along the riverside path, where I saw white nettle, and a mahonia bush. I was sad to see that the huge amount of building work down in the Totterdown basin area (all student housing, unfortunately) means most  of the verges where lots of wildflowers grew have been dug up:-( 
I carried on beside the floating harbour, across curvy Castle bridge, and into Castle Park. I had a lovely look around the Physic garden where I saw rosemary, cranesbill, a hellebore flower and a lovely pink rose. It’s funny in that garden because the only other people in there were six or so rather heavy-duty drug dealers and their customers.  I decided, quite rightly, that they would have no interest in me at all.  So I was happy to potter around looking for blips. I have this theory that older women are actually invisible to some people, particularly young men.  It’s quite useful sometimes:) 
In the evening, as it was a Friday, though it’s hard to keep track, the Orkney and Bristol film club watched my choice “The Velvet Queen”  an extraordinary documentary about two French men ( a poet, and a wildlife photographer) in the wildest, emptiest part of Tibet, looking for a snow leopard.  They also talk and think a great deal about what it means to go to wild places, and whether it’s justified. It’s quite clear that however much they are looking for animals, it is the animals that observe them,  far more successfully. And to me, someone who now has extreme misgivings about tourist travel, the most telling line was “things are not there for humans to look at them”. 
Portia wishes to make it clear that although snow leopards are quite impressive, she is actually the Velvet Queen