Thursday 12 June 2008

Up the road, afternoon.

A sudden chatter and three goldfinches, crimson faces, black and yellow wings, flutter up from the deep purple thistles. Thistles are against the byelaws, but nobody's told the goldfinches that.

3 comments:

Bee said...

How can thistles be against bylaws?

The goldfinches are right to ignore such a silly edict.

Lucy said...

It's true. By arret prefectoral blah blah, one is obliged to remove thistles by mechanical or chemical means from one's land before they go to seed. However, it's honoured quite as much in the breach as the observance, and there are a couple of very wet little fields down in this dip which no one does much with at all, except occasionally to put a few cows in, and they are delightfully well colonised by buttercups, ladies smock, ragged robin, thistles and the the odd patch of bluebells in the corner.

Bee said...

Oh, I hope the bees can find these slightly wild fields.

Clearly the French like to codify correct behavior as much as the English do . . . but perhaps they don't conform to the letter of the law quite so diligently?