Garden, wonderful words, too magnificent

Sunset over Bridge Road, Richmond last Friday 

I've been slack again. I have been keeping a mental list of stuff to blog, but if I leave it any longer to write them down I'll forget them completely. 

Luke and I have a herb garden! We've been buying a lot of fresh herbs lately, but not always using them all before they're past their best (which doesn't take long). So we bought some pots and seedlings and made a wee garden on the fire escape outside our kitchen. There's basil, sage, coriander, mint and some baby lettuce. Some pesky creature has had a snack on the mint leaves, but apart from that, they're doing OK. (We did only plant them on Sunday, so that's not saying much.)

Pudibund. That's a word! It means bashful or modest. I learned this from the Inky Fool (the author, you might recall, of The Etymologicon).

Another wordy bit of glee - the Japanese term mono no aware. It refers to an awareness of the transience of things and wistfulness at their passing. Its literal translation is "the pathos of things" but, as aware is similar to our "ah" or "oh", it's also translated as the "ahh-ness of things". I'm not sure why, but I like this. Maybe because it's one of those foreign terms  that doesn't really have an English equivalent. 

I've been getting a few spam comments on my blogs lately and today's was amusing. Apparently I am "just too magnificent". Sorry. I'll try less hard from now on. 

The other day, I saw Mr and Mrs Plover standing right at the river's edge when a flock of seagulls flew in to land in the same area. One flew so close that Mr/Mrs Plover had to duck! 

Check out these amazing and disturbingly life-like octopus cakes.