Botany is where it is at - or rather should I say where I am at.
I have been adding to my ever expanding gardening/horticulture library with as many botany books I can lay my hands on. In particular, I have taken a liking to what are known as
Florilegium. In essence, a collection of illustrations of plants in a specific garden e.g.
Kew or the
Sheffield Botanical Garden et al. I have collected quite a few books and spend many a happy hour looking at some truly marvellous illustrations by gifted artists. One of my favourite illustrators is Sarah Simblet. My goodness, is she gifted with her mind blowing pen and ink illustrations!
Before I tell you what I am currently reading I’ll share with you an anecdote about a recent correspondence with one of King Charles’s staff - Lady Pearson. I jest not! I discovered there was a
Florilegium of King Charles’s
Highgrove Gardens. I watched a review of it on YouTube. Fantastic! I want, I want I told myself. A limited edition of 175 copies signed by the King himself! I wrote to Lady Pearson and asked the cost: a mere £12,575.00! Aargh! Thankfully, after getting back up from the floor, common sense prevailed. I realised as much as I would love to buy them they would need to be stored in perfect archival conditions - something I do not have.
If you want to see to what I am referring go here:
https://youtu.be/oz16gBujCD0. The skills and talent involved in creating these works be it the illustrators or the actual book producers is something to behold.
Back to today, I am reading:
The New Sylva A Discourse of Forest and Orchard Trees for the Twenty-First Century. To save words a description is given here:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/New-Sylva-Disc ... 408835444 or here:
https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/new-sylva-9781408835449/. It is a tome, if ever there was one. Not a book you could read in bed unless you want to break a couple of ribs - lol.
Next up, my book is the words, wisdom and the multi talents of one
Carl Linnaeus - aka
Carl von Linné. It is to him that the World Of Nature is indebted for his ‘Binomial Nomenclature’.
I am going to be so busily engrossed in my books that Crimbo will have been and gone before I notice - thank goodness!
Meantime...
Be Good. Take Care & Love The One You Are With.
the first time and 
