Our mystery plant
As regular readers know, I think that the great thing about being a blogger is that readers usually know more about stuff than you do.
So can I please exploit your collective IQ? My wife found this fascinating little plant growing on the gravel of our driveway, and we have racked our brains (and ransacked the various reference works we possess) to try and identify it — so far without success.
The fact that its leaves are asymmetrical seems to be a feature, not a bug, btw.
Advice/suggestions welcomed.
The photograph (taken with a macro lens) exaggerates the relative size of the leaf. Here’s a wider shot to give some perspective.
Quote of the Day
”Satire is a lesson, parody is a game.”
- Vladimir Nabokov
Musical alternative to the morning’s radio news
Wagner | Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg | Act 3 – Prelude
Long Read of the Day
‘We have a populist government that is – fatally – not popular’
Terrific profile by my Observer colleague Tim Adams of Chris Patten, the kind of liberal, thoughtful Conservative who used to exist before the party was taken over by fanatics.
Patten lives in a large villa in Barnes in south-west London, next to the wooded common. There is a 1930s village atmosphere, which bankers and lawyers now pay £5m to inhabit. Visiting him is like stepping into a lost Conservative hinterland. I’m met at the door by his wife, Lavender, and their terrier, Bobby. The gracious, book-lined sitting room gives out on to a generous garden. Under a painted portrait of Patten and his wife of 51 years are photographs of their eight grandchildren. He turns off a muted symphony when I arrive. On the table is the book he’s just put down, Julia Boyd’s A Village in the Third Reich: How Ordinary Lives Were Transformed by the Rise of Fascism, and a copy of his own new book, The Hong Kong Diaries, which is the occasion for our meeting. Very nice, revealing profile of an essentially decent man.
My commonplace booklet
Well, well. IKEA is getting into Vinyl — and selling a turntable. Link
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