Yin & Yang

What better way to use a sunny morning than digging up unwelcome brambles in the orchard? Actually, I could think of a multitude - it's a filthy job: in muddy soil mixed with rotted windfall apples; hard work; fiddly; what looks like a small patch turns out to be more widespread than you realised; bramble stems burrow into the ground and grow roots, so you often have to dig up both ends; many roots grow too deep to dig, so it's impossible to be 100% effective, meaning I'll have to do it again one day. Sisyphus comes to mind

To regain my zen balance I went to see the hazel - which has no thorns and does not spread aggressively with suckers or rooted branches. A picture of the parts - male catkins and female flowers - that were missing yesterday. The bush is festooned with more catkins than I have ever seen, but that doesn't help with pollination, because hazels, like apples, do not self-pollinate. Really, we should have planted a second hazel bush, but there is so much wild hazel in the area that pollination has never been a problem

This web page gives a very clear and concise description of the pollination process. I did not know it is so protracted. Nor did I realise how far back these catkins and flowers originate. The profusion I'm seeing today reflects the conditions last spring, when they first formed. So yes, the life-force in the natural world is astonishing; sometimes that is delightful and sometimes it is brambles