Hemlock no friend to Socrates

The first thing I do in the morning is to open the curtains to see what sort of day it is.

The bedroom is on the ground floor and the window frames a great view of a wild meadow with a hedgerow and a bog beyond, so I often get back into bed for a few minutes to admire the view and plan my day.

I was doing this recently when a movement caught my attention. A few metres outside the window, in the headland of the meadow, was a tall plant which had carried umbrella- like heads of white flowers a few weeks ago. Now the flowers had ripened into clusters of globular brown seeds and a pair of blue tits were balancing delicately on the brittle stalklets and harvesting them.