Poetry

I'm old enough that the public exams I took at 16 were 'O' levels, rather than the GCSEs that replaced them. One of them was biology, and quite a lot of marks could be garnered by committing to memory specialist vocabulary: vena cava, nephron, vacuole, xylem, chloroplast. I remember drilling myself in the labeling of the parts of an idealised flower, treating the words like a form of poetry, to be learned as a recitation. The female components, in order, top to bottom, down the centre of the flower: stigma-style-ovary-ovule; 4 marks; helpfully alliterative. The surrounding ring of male parts, the stamens, comprise the long filament topped by pollen bearing anther - not so easy to remember

A visit to the orchard - to unload a prodigious accumulation of vegetable peelings into the compost bin and to check the bees have adequate food stores for the coming cold snap. The bees greeted me at the hive entrance - surprisingly active for a blustery day. I think they were carrying out the corpses that have built up in the hive during the rainy days when normal disposal was not possible, as well as engaging in what are euphemistically called 'cleansing flights' - basically popping out for a poo

On the walk back, we diverted via the hazel, to reassure ourselves that spring is on the way. At 'O' level, I was not required to remember or explain that many plants do not conform to my idealised diagram. Hazel is one of them, having separate male and female 'flowers' on the same plant. The male flowers are the familiar catkins, designed merely to flood the area with pollen. This bud with its crimson plume is the female 'flower' - indeed the purple-red, feathery projection is the style, of my long-remembered label, presumably with minute stigmas on the tips, ready to receive pollen, and an ovule inside an ovary within the bud, waiting to develop into a hazel nut

Encouraged by the burgeoning hazel, I scoured the garden for more signs of spring and came away with pictures of flowers or almost-flowers from Viburnum (2 types); periwinkle; Helibore; snowdrop; aconite; primrose and sweet box (smelling heady)

At the time I was learning to label a flower, I had not yet encountered Henry Reed's well-known poem, 'The Naming of Parts' - an amusing word-play, with a cold, bitter resentment lurking beneath the surface. Well worth re-reading on a day when bees and flowers have been a cheerful reminder that the season is turning, but the news does not let us forget that brutal warfare still rages