Cold Comfort

Before Sauron turned his lidless eye on Ukraine, he spent some time perfecting his evil in the Caucasus - the area bordering Mordor, between the Black and Caspian seas, incorporating Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. When the Musk regieme have offered him sufficient oblations, he may well return to the Caucasus for a second helping

The Caucasus is the origin of this non-native, but naturalised, creeping comfrey. Like so many plants, the Victorians imported it as a garden plant - interesting not least because its flowers start pink, turn blue then white. However, I like the line from one wild flower site that "It is an aggressive coloniser and is often thrown out from gardens"! That means thrown into the wider environment where it has made itself at home, and sometimes an invasive nuisance. Here, under the wide overgrown hedge between home and the apiary, it is a welcome sight for us spring colour collectors

Despite biting cold, I was pleased to see bees - albeit snugly tucked under an insulating pillow, but obviously not cold enough to form a protective winter cluster. This suggests the colony must still be large enough to be generating plenty of warmth

I got another smile from the Royal Horticultural Society's note that comfrey is "Harmful if eaten repeatedly". Nevertheless, it has been used as a medicinal herb since ancient times, and its common names in many languages indicate its use for the treatment of ruptures, strains and fractures. NATO take note

A postscript to my blip about Folly Bridge. This is the place from where Charles Dodgson - Lewis Carrol - set off on a boat trip to Godstow with a girl called Alice and her sisters, and told a story about her namesake's adventures in Wonderland. Dodgson was a fellow of Christ Church college, at the other end of the bridge, and you may have seen that an American benefactor has just donated a large collection of Caroll memorabilia to the college, completely out of the blue. Curiouser and curiouser