Walking Commentary
Manchester to Rome 2022
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.
It’s the second World Book Day during my (not) Walking Commentary daily journaling and last year I got it wrong. I wrongly encouraged readers to celebrate an unofficial celebration. Today is the official World Book Day for 2021.
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.
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.
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.
