More from the beach...

Sometimes even I don’t know why I blog a thing. It can be anything that sets me off, a cloud, a tree, a stone. This time a plant, a beach plant, a plant that I so wanted that I considered digging it up and taking it home for an instant. But I didn’t.

After all, how could I disturb her quiet existence?

Just another beach and wandering through the dunes I came upon a Sea Holly. I tried to grow one once, bought from Woolworths in a paper packet and placed in a sandy soil. ‘Guaranteed to grow or your money back’. It didn’t flower, it didn’t even leaf, instead it died and I couldn’t bring myself to ask for my money, so deep was my sense of failure. But here she was, so full of life and prime, locked in sand and shingle, all thriving to make me smile with my almost happiness.

Such beauty within the waxy stem and leaves, the yellow green of the young florets, the deep lilac of the adult, a slowly changing movement from one to t’other for every floret aged between.

The leaf of a Holly bush and the flower of a thistle, but neither – a member of the carrot family - dig up the pale, thick, fleshy root and boil with sugar to make candied eryngoes. I never have, but 'they' say it tastes good. They know so much those them, almost everything - almost but not quite all.

I’m pleased to see her and I don’t know why, anymore than I know why I’m telling you that I found her, anymore than I know that the Sea Holly is a she, anymore than I know why I’m blogging her.

Even 'they' don't know. Perhaps it was the almost happiness that for an instant she brought to me.