Where Have All The Flowers Gone?

 When will they ever learn?

Sag' mir, wo die Blumen sind

Marlene Dietrich knew a thing or two....  Her schnapps and tobacco voice seduced generations of young things, what with her blue angels and her touches of evil....  But her version of Where have all the flowers gone? rises with my sap in the springtime.  Pace Pete Seeger, but you didn't quite have the allure....

So I have been out photographing the spring.  Which was very late this year, what with drought and frost and global warming, and Brexit, Covid, etc (when will you stop complaining?  Ed)

In fact, I had almost given up hope (Yeah? Who's hopeful these days? Ed)

But I have a question.  Not, Where have all the flowers gone?

But...  Where will all the flowers go?

Red Soldier Beetle

That is to say.... We take all this wonder for granted, but without pestilential insects most of our natural floral displays will simply be a thingy of the past....

So, it is the balance of this and that - the Yin and Yang of light and dark, cold and warmth - that makes for a world in which we have oxygen to breathe and food to eat.....

Hoverfly

Without bees, and their allies all the other pollinating insects, we would not have bread to eat, nor fruit for dessert....

Coccinella septempunctata

So, in many ways, a bunch of flowers is not just a pretty bouquet.  It is manna.  It is heaven.

Common Blue Damselfly

Flies may be unwanted pesky irritants.  But without them this world will become desiccated and barren.  Never mind the G7 or the COP26, just look how clean your windscreen has become over the last few years.....

Yes, many of the flowers we love can only reappear if there are bugs to have sex with them (that might be biologically inaccurate, but allow me some poetic licence)

Hoverfly

So, to return to my titular theme.  Where will all the flowers go?  

Thick-legged flower beetle

Perhaps young girls may pick them.....

White tailed bumble bee

And perhaps those gentle creatures may succumb to the charms of young men.....

White tailed bumble bee

Who then go off to war with life, and death.....

To meet some inevitably testosterone-fuelled death....

But in the meantime, farmers spray their fields, and big Pharma recommends this and that, while the supermarkets demand perfection and instant produce....

So the little things get ignored,

And the delicate colours of our environment begin to shrink and fade....

And we, the super beings, the great manipulators, will no longer be in the pink....

All our olympic achievements, our euro champions, our teslas, our test and trace, and our 'sovereignty' will become as dust...

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains.

For me, Where the bee sucks, there suck I....

Garden Bumble Bee

Spring, however late, is a wonderful reminder of how busy and exciting life can be.  Life may only last for days, but it must go on.  Flowers spray across the paths and then, before you know it, the mast, the berries, the sloes, the cherries, are food for passing strangers.  It goes so fast.  And then you wonder where it went.  And then, as things progress, you wonder why it is different this year.  And then next year we will say it was better in the past.  And then we tell our children how it was, when the fields were full of flowers and the butterflies were such a nuisance.  

And they won't believe us.

And it will be our fault.

Hoverfly

Where have all the flowers gone?

Where will all the flowers go?

Hoverfly

Gone to graveyards, every one....

Berlin Memorial Plaque

"Where have all the flowers gone"
Marlene Dietrich
27 December 1901 – 6 May 1992
Actress and Singer
She was one of the few German actresses that attained international significance.
Despite tempting offers by the Nazi regime, she emigrated to the USA and became an American citizen.
In 2002, the city of Berlin posthumously made her an honorary citizen.

"I am, thank God, a Berliner."

Funded by the GASAG Berlin Gasworks Corporation.

Ich bin von Kopf bis Fuß auf Liebe eingestellt

(I wish)

Thank You!

Friends, Remnants, and Countrymen.....

I bought a new car the other day.  I had saved all my life and put aside a little bit here and there, and now, as I'm not so far off my three-score-years-and-ten, I wanted to treat myself.  A little bit of fun left at the bottom of the bucket list.

I took possession of the car the other day.  I thought it looked like this.....

Shiny and new.  Quiet and safe.  A car for the outdoors.

So I proudly took Amanda (my wife) for a drive into the countryside. Parked.  And went for a walk.

The countryside looked like this.....

Fresh and green, with those wonderful splashes of mischievous digitalis purpurea (common foxglove)....

Even on a slightly overcast day I thought my country - the country where I grew up, the country that my parents and grandparents fought for, the country that formed me -  was beautiful. Something to be proud of.  

We watched skylarks ascending, and swifts scissoring across the tops of the grasses.

Then, when we got back to the car park, everything had changed.....

No longer the shiny fine vehicle I had put my pension into, but a burnt out wreck, a worthless shell....

The irony is, I should have seen it coming, so, despite my shock, I am grateful to those who went to the trouble to teach me this lesson....

I know who did it.  But it wasn't the usual suspects.  No.  Not the seventeen and a half million of my compatriots who normally attract the blame.  

They weren't responsible.  No.  They have been abused for years, the victims of an under-education posing as a National Curriculum, and of shameful welfare cuts.  The lack of investment in northern cities and small towns, the poverty of austerity has reaped its own harvest.

No.  Seventeen and a half million of my compatriots cannot take the blame.  They too, after all, will find their vehicles, their prized possessions, burnt out in the countryside. They will find they have no friends.

No!

Friends, Remnants, countrymen, lend me your ears.....

I have been taught a lesson.  My eyes were blind.  I thought I was a European, but....

O masters, if I were disposed to stir 

Your hearts and minds to mutiny and rage, 

I should do Boris wrong, and Michael wrong, 

Who, you all know, are honourable men: 

I will not do them wrong; I rather choose 

To wrong the dead, to wrong myself and you, 

Than I will wrong such honourable men.

And though I remain a European, geographically, culturally, spiritually and emotionally, 

Good friends, sweet friends, let me not stir you up 

To such a sudden flood of mutiny. 

They that have done this deed are honourable: 

What private griefs they have, alas, I know not, 

That made them do it: they are wise and honourable, 

And will, no doubt, with reasons answer you. 

I come not, friends, to steal away your hearts: 

I am no orator, as Boris is; 

But, as you know me all, a plain blunt man, 

That love my country......

We must be patient now.  We have to tighten our belts, and start again. No longer will I yearn for a shiny new vehicle, I must learn to walk again.....

And so must my children.

The evil that men do lives after them....

But the larks still sing...... (for the moment....)