I’d never seen such a creature before, but I knew in a vague sort of way that something called a pollen beetle existed, and this has to be it. It could be a cue for thoughts of corruption and decay, the worm beneath the bud, et in Arcadia ego (google it) and we are in the old Greek province of Arkadia here. But look again. The flower has enough pollen to pollinate fields of tulips. The beetle, although a very messy eater and seeming clumsy and laboured in its movements, has not disturbed the ordered, crisp arrangement of the flower’s petals.

I admit, I had thought that the weird beetle could pose as a corrective to notions of perfect tulip prettiness. I also didn’t introduce the beetle at the end of that post the other day, into the past again, naturally: the perfect tulip?, because I didn’t want to spoil the mood of the perfect moment. We’re too quick to interpret nature according to our own moral codes.

Anyway, it turns out there are lots and lots of species of pollen beetles, but I haven’t found any that are half as messy as mine.

The great fire was in 2007. More than 90 people died in fires in Greee that year; we were looking the other way, worried about the bank crash. The tulip pictures were taken in 2016 when there was little sign of regeneration. But here’s what I saw this year, in May. Arbutus, cotinus, judas tree, broom, and if you look closely you can see the odd pine tree which, if all goes well, will eventually become dominant once again:

But here, half a mile away, something completely different! Lots of little pine trees and no shrubs, except for the broom by the roadside:

And here you can see tree trunks from the first fire lying among young shrubs burnt in a subsequent blaze:

It’s complex. Always change. I can’t read it very well. Sometimes quick sometimes slow. Progress, setbacks. How much time do we have? Room for optimism though.