Sound advice, even if idiosyncratically translated.

10 minutes into online training for the start of term and I have lost the will to live.

Bilbo being appreciated on Black Cat Appreciation Day. He is a holy terror and I love him to bits. #AdoptDontShop

There goes the budget for this month

‘Cats don’t love you like dogs do’. Bilbo, waiting by the front door when I get back from the doctors.

Quite remarkable that POWO is only slightly less user friendly when it isn’t working than when it is.

Frogs and Impatiens omeiana enjoy very similar conditions.

Product development ideas for tool manufacturers: a carpenter’s pencil that beeps in response to ‘Where’s that bloody pencil?’ and an electric screwdriver with enough torque to drive screws into really dense materials, such as marshmallow.

Number of hex keys I own: 1.7 billion. Number of hex keys I can find: 3, all too small.

‘For every ten parts of land, three should be made into a pond…Of the remaining seven tenths, four should be built up with earth - how high or low is of no importance - and be planted with bamboo in a harmonious way’ Ji Cheng, The Craft Of Gardens, 1631.

Panther doing panther things.

Salix udensis ‘Sekka’

Hepatica japonica ‘Anjyu’

Trillium chloropetalum is quite ready to come out of this crate, please.

It hasn’t made it into the ground in its new home yet, but Jeffersonia diphylla is doing its spring thing

Hepatica japonica ‘Una Bara’

Cats aren’t very good at hide-and-seek, part 74.

Hepatica japonica ‘Hirakawa’

A gleam of sunshine! *rushes outside* *drowns*

There is probably a Japanese word for ‘the feeling of boundless joy at having submitted one’s tax return tempered by the absolute horror of confronting, in black and white, the fact that you effectively make 3p per hour’.

If you look very closely you can see what was a tray of nice Pollia japonica seedlings under the cat.