I suppose that at my age I should have grown out of imagining a blue liquorice allsort whenever I see this blue flowered bush. But there you go I lack will power. For long enough I called it the liquorice allsort plant but now I know it as Ceanothus, some call it the Californian Lilac (but never in my hearing). Wikipedia, that ever reliable fount of information, tells that, in far away foreign parts, the plant is sometimes known as New Jersey Tea as the leaves were used to substitute for tea during the time of bloody fratricidal civil warfare now known as the American Revolution (actually I know it as the American War of Independence (starring Mel Gibson), when did it become the American Revolution? And why wasn't I told?). No doubt a consequence of imbibing all that ersatz brew is that 'blue' now has the opposite political connotation in the US of A to here in the land of dopey Tories. And finally, speaking of Tories and the blues; to lose two Prime Ministers looks a lot like carelessness.
Hurray , hurray the end of May,
All our troubles have gone away!
