The Colour of Honey...

...is Goldeny, for bees sup at goldeny flowers like pansies and buttercups.  And Yet,  just Look at all the other-coloured flowers they take their nectar from to produce more GOLDENY honey...

Well, look at two of them anyway...


And then, read this extract:

"Beekeepers in northeastern France have been alarmed to find their bees producing honey in unnatural shades of green and blue...
It is thought the bees have been eating the sugary waste from M&Ms, small chocolates in brightly-coloured shells."
(BBC News 4 Oct 2012)

It's puzzling (isn't it?), why the colour of M&Ms should affect the colour of honey when the colour of petal doesn't. 

The unfortunate thing is that they can't sell the blue/green honey and must throw it away.  For the colour of our food does hugely affect our appetite... 

In 1981, George made a celebratory dollop of red, white & blue mashed potato for Diana & Charles' wedding.  It took enormous skill and dexterity to produce, and he was justifiably proud of the result. 

But no-one could eat it except with eyes shut, and it went the way of the blue/green honey.  (In spite of its potently enticing aroma).

A sad tale altogether, but luckily the colour of honey can but lead us to The Colour of Money and Paul Newman...

...and the twinkling Colour of those eyes

And here's another twinkling specimen we saw in concert last night:

The gifted and delightful Andy Fairweather-Low, of course!

It Came from Outer Space

What the hell IS that?

We had friends round for a meal at the weekend – lovely friends who laughed heartily when George burnt the rice, and chewed stoically on my resistant lumps of Pork-in-Ginger with nere a grimace.

These are friends for whom the getting together is paramount rather than the food offerings (mercifully), and who I’m almost certain will not mind when I say that Picards Freezer Emporium is their own market of choice.

So this weekend they brought their fun and frivolity, a superb bottle of wine and… a Thing - the like of which we’d never seen before! (I shall attempt further down to display a photo). But to try and describe it…

It’s about 30cm tall and comes in two parts. One’s a knobbly stick with a pinkyorangeyfurry tennis ball on top, covered in many yellow arrow-headed fronds.

The other part is a flat green stick with a corrugated heart-shaped fan. Beautiul… but what is it for? You could possibly plunge the sink with the tennis ball… despatch tenacious cobwebs, stick it behind your ear while fanning yourself with the other bit…

Alarmingly, Mélanie grabbed The Thing while George and I were still coming to terms with it, and ran with it to the sink – for it's actually Alive! They insisted it came from a flower shop, so now it’s in a vase and yes, it’s drinking the water! I’d say it’s grown twenty feet since Saturday. Ah-hah - Could it be a beanstalk?

The tennis blob has a delicate aroma redolent of cauliflower, yet bizarrely aromatic. We've noticed the cats aren’t keen at all. In fact I suspect that they, like me, think it sometimes moves its fronds. And I could swear it just turned to watch as I walked past.

So, is it trying to communicate? Will it start singing those irritating five notes from 'Close Encounters'? Or will it suddenly leap Triffidly out of its vase and whack us with its fan?

Mélanie, Eveline and Ignace say that they'd never seen one before either, and had gone into the shop to buy an orchid. There was just something about it that made them choose that instead...

It's Just The Beginning...