CLEGGISCUS SUBFLATUS var. TARDIFLORA

Look, I'm sorry, OK? It's been a really difficult time, right, and I know you're supposed to post blogs every couple of days and people like the saintly VP are absolutely spiffingly brilliantly conscientious about their input - gorgeous thrush, by the way - and if you don't be good and diligent and post lovely things every few seconds, your fans (fans??? Hah!!!!!) leave you in droves and then you're all alone and pining in the blogosphere and the world goes black and we all end up disintegrating under a hung parliament.

Hanged, more like! Eh? What??

So rather than completely diffuse my persona into the great aether beyond, like a fart in thunderstorm, as my father was wont to say, here's a piccy and a couple of extremely important and non trivial observations.

But first the sad announcement that I can't come to Malvern, so won't be able to hook up with all you blogging lovelies this year. It's the immobilising problem with the hip. I do hope you all have a great show, and so sorry to miss it. Next year, let's hope.

One of the PG's porno shots. Rana temporaria sticking together.

Observation Number One. Well, I knew the election campaigns would be boring but who could possibly have thought that anything so earth-shatteringly important could end up blander than a pot of Cow and Gate Baby Food? I'm not even sure whether I'll have enough vim to drag my decrepit bod up to our polling station, even though it is also our local pub and one could enjoy a pint while deciding on the best and most effective way of spoiling one's ballot paper and giving the counters a bit of a larf at the same time. Our Tory candidate is but a child and I haven't seen hide nor hair of any of the others. I wish we had a Tarquin Biscuitbarrel here, but alas, we haven't.

Obs No 2. Peat-free compost is truly crap. I've tried about seven different brands and they're all rubbish. I'm not suggesting we should dash off to wreck a few more peat bogs - that would be awful - but for goodness sake, please DON'T tell me that peat frees work just as well. They don't, and when even tulips can languish because the stuff dries out after a twenty minute sunny spell, you know that they are simply not up to scratch - or, as Civil Servants love to say - when not recommending Vatican Condoms or suggesting that the Pope might want to bless a gay marriage, while he's here - they are not 'fit for purpose.'

Obs 3. The butterflies have been fabulous this spring. Orange tips, both male and female (the girls don't pimp the orange) Brimstones, (their girls are greenish white, not yellow) and the first Holly Blues (don't ask) were on the wing in our garden over the past fortnight. The cowslips in the mini-meadow are attracting scads of bees and the trilliums have made a remarkable come-back.

Obs 4. Cuckoo flower. I've never seen so much, or in such glory. Cardamine pratensis seems to vary in colour from a gorgeous, gentle, springtime lilac mauve, as in our area, to a creamier almost grey-mauve on the roadsides in Kent, including the M2. When I walked in woods near Cardiff this time last year, I discovered that the Welsh lady's smocks were so pale as to be almost white. Why has it done so well this year? A batch of it has popped up next to a vivid orange geum in my secret garden - what a combination! Tasteful or what??

Obs 5. I'm a bit worried about the Photographer General who seems to have devoted her recent activities to shooting pornographic pictures of copulating creatures. Well, frogs, actually, since you ask. Hence the rather raunchy piccy at the top of this post. They're a bit late, since most frog people's tadpoles are already at the toddler stage, ie, developing a pair of legs and falling over a lot, but I found these images on a flash card which she'd left to be processed. And she told me - get this - that the card contained nothing but 'pictures of the amazing crop of dandelions in your grass.' Hmmm. Interesting. I suppose I shouldn't admit to having dandelions on our premises, but they are lovely. Perhaps I'll post a piccy of some soon, when I've finished wading through the naughty pics.

But for now, I must go. The hip's still a wreck - MRI scan in early May. I've just had the whole of next winter's firewood delivered and the pile of logs is now obstructing everying around here. I must a daily quota to the growing stack in our garage to prevent family strife.

I'm listening to Billy Holiday singing You've Changed.

This day last year, a Sunday, our garden was open to the public for the village charities. One of the visitors was Rab C Nesbitt, aka talented and charming Gregor Fisher. He seemed quite impressed.

The film last night was Huston's 1950 classic The Asphalt Jungle. The busty, relatively unknown Marilyn Monroe had a small part in this great story but you could already bask in her screen presence. But Sterling Hayden? There was no one quite so good at seething and sulking as he, playing the small time crook in this upmarket Film Noir. He looked as miserable and edgy as a fen farmer who's just discovered that someone's just nicked a potato from his 1,000 tonne, grant-aided storage barn.

More, better posts soon, I promise. Meanwhile, vote Lib, think Lab or be Conned - the choice is yours. Or is it? What if the party that gets the smallest number of total votes ends up in power? That could happen. And they say our system doesn't need reforming!!!! Byee!