Euphorbias, beetroot and cutting through spiritual materialism

1. This afternoon we went to visit the National Collection of Euphorbias on an allotment at Harthill near Sheffield. The collection is the work of a retired school teacher Don Witton. He has made an incredible garden on the corner of an otherwise pretty ordinary group of allotment. Mr Witton has been opening his garden to the public and privately for some time. I really love this genus and I have grown some plants from seed and Allan and I have planted others purchased from growers and garden centres. Mr Witton had quite a lot of plants for sale, but to be honest the best had gone by the time we arrived. I did however manage to by one (E. myrsinites) that we used to have in the garden but which died last year. The plant in the picture we think was E. x martinii. Later we went to Dobbies Garden Centre at Barlborough. This was a huge, sanitised garden centre, teaming with Bank Holiday weekend customers. I found another beautiful compact euporbia known as 'Tiny Tim" and it was bought for us by Allan's cousin who we went with. I am very fond of these plants and consider each of them to be jewel-treasures of our garden.

2. We went to Margaret's for tea afterwards and had a lovely spread. I especially enjoyed the pickled beetroot. I'd like to think it came directly from the row in her vegetable patch but I think Tesco is more likely. It was very fine though and reminded me that there are some things like the luxury of pickled beetroot for which I will be always grateful. Margaret was kind enough to give us three cherry tomato plants and let me dig up some Alchemilla for her garden to bring home for ours. Allan wonders if it might be A. vulgaris which is the commonest British species and just subtly different from A. mollis that we have all over our garden.


3. My third beautiful thing was to forgive myself for not getting it together to write yesterday. Nobody but me reads this stuff anyway so it hardly matters. Being attached to anything seems to be unwise. If the last week has taught me anything that can be summed up it might be contained in the title of a long-lost book by the slightly discredited Chogyam Trungpa Rimpoche "Cutting through spiritual materialism".