Today: self-heal, orchids, and meadowsweet in the uncut grass around the star fort.

There has been a lot of illness and death in the community lately. People receiving radical cancer treatment, or entering a new stage of cancer. A funeral every week. This week we attended the graveside rites for a woman in her 30s, mother and wife, who had passed away from stage 4 lung cancer. Seamus, Des's best friend, was buried on Wednesday; he had been in hospital for awhile with kidney cancer.

When Des answered the door today at noon, he was quite drunk. He made me coffee, which tasted funny. "Is there alcohol in this?" "Just a measure of brandy, m'dear." As the dogs played, we sat in the garden with his grief, with the sadness of this strange unsummery summer.

In the polytunnel, there was a flower I didn't recognize, growing riotously, pretty star-shaped blue flowers in droopy clusters. Borage, according to a plant-ID app. Apparently they taste like cucumber. Gerard's Herbal of 1597 says they are used in salads to "exhilerate and make the minde glad." "Good to expel melancholy", according to Culpeper's Complete Herbal of 1653.

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