Walking Commentary

Manchester to Rome 2022

trees

Magnolia Redux

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I’m pleased that the Magnolia chapbook has been well received. I’m saddened that I have found another hundred whose blooms have alerted me to their presence. One gorgeous stellata is barely fifty metres from our driveway, hiding in plain sight from my camera. Our national pandemic travel restrictions have been relaxed and today we ventured beyond 5 kms. Almost giddy with excitement, we walked the gardens of Fernhill, some six kilometres from our driveway. It was lovely to be in the company of tall pines, thuya and wellingtonia, spreading birch, beech and oak. We were also among specimen acid loving trees. Huge rhododendrons, camelias and several magnificent magnolias.

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Magnolia 377

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The Southern Magnolia aka Magnolia grandiflora and I’ve located one so far. Oh, but you don’t know what I mean even though you guessed from the title that this is journal #377.

March, being the month of magnolias, will be marked this year by my challenging myself to make a chapbook of magnolia photos. Magnolia will be the next photozine from Bracket Books Ireland.

Eclectic Electric: Magnolia Stave?
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Gingko Shot

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This is the third ‘shot’ in three days and it comes from a London street. There’s a magnificent Ginko Biloba on Greencoat Place in Westminster that I watched for weeks until the leaves were right. Then the sun had to be right and I waited a day or two more. And so, at 11:05:42 this day last year I was standing beneath a yellow bough that is just higher than the single decked buses that pass three or four times an hour.

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Sequoia and Sunflowers

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It seems I was wrong about how sunflowers transport their water to the tip of the plant. I have just read that science doesn’t really know how a tree transports water from the soil to the crowns of trees. Ask yourself the simple question I forgot to ask: how does the world famous redwood called Hyperion get water to its crown 115 m above the ground? It must be properly hydrated given that it’s over 900 years old.

Langley Park Redwoods © Simon Robinson 2009
Curious to see a redwood? Here’s a website dedicated to the redwoods of the British Isles.
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Brief Encounters: 2002

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So, this is journal number 150 and I’m wondering if Siena is a nice place to visit. We’d have spent last night there and be walking down the last eleven days to Rome if not for the pandemic. Our plan had us continuing along the Via Francigena, reaching Ponte d’Arbia tonight where we’d planned to rest for our weekly day off. I think we’d have stayed a second night in Siena instead. I’ll try to remember this for next year, assuming waves of pandemic and panic won’t prevent us trekking from Manchester to Rome in 2021.

There’s a letter regarding life insurance on the counter this morning. It includes a Covid alert that seems strangely inappropriate on a renewal notice.

Trout Fishing in Utah in October 2002.
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