Lots of purple about: thistles, vetches and some of the grasses beginning to flower and the little herb called `self-heal` which seems to spread everywhere and is, we are told by Gerard, the best "wound herbe":
"the very name importing it to be very admirable upon this account and indeed the Virtues doe make it good, for this very herbe without the mixture of any other ingredient, being onely bruised and wrought with the point of a knife upon a trencher or the like, will be brought into the form of a salve, which will heal any green wounde even in the first intention, after a very wonderful manner, The decoction of Prunell made with wine and water doth join together and make whole and sound all wounds"
Once the shock of bad news diminishes it`s the sense that nothing will ever be the same again which is one of the harder things to come to terms with - even the trivial realisation that previously innocuous words and place names will from now on always have different associations.
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