In the walled garden
Glenarm Castle - still owned and occupied by the local Earl - has a lovely walled garden. It's now part of a whole complex of visitor attractions: tasteful, but also adept at parting you from your money. Those aristos are a dab hand at it.
Anyway, the walled garden is beautiful enough to attract me in despite my gripes about giving money to the local aristocracy. I spent a very peaceful couple of hours wandering about in the sunshine. It took my mind off the increasingly grim stories in the news about far-right violence.
Much of the garden is laid out in a conventional, formal style. The two exceptions are the kitchen garden and an orchard area which now has large wildflower beds around the trees. These more informal areas are really my favourites, and the ones that I look to for gardening inspiration. Both were full of pollinators today.
So today's image aims to reflect the feeling of poppies and other flowers waving gently in the mild wind, the poppy standing out against the other soft shapes and colours.
Later Richard and I had a conversation about whether or not it makes sense to call these current bouts of violence "terrorism". Two retired sociologists - we really know how to have a good time :-)
I feel uneasy with the leap into deploying the Terrorism term: it feels like slapping an emotive label onto something in a way that closes down discussion, rather than broadening it.
Richard prefers the term "political violence", arguing that this can encompass many examples: from the killings of civilians by British soldiers on Bloody Sunday in Derry in 1972 - a state-sponsored act - to the loose-knit, social media-influenced events in the UK now.
Somehow it was helpful to talk about it in a way that wasn't just a venting of sorrow and confusion.
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