Marie Juana in her hay day
Maure Juana is our treasured Borstal Heath hippy – bless her. She was middle aged in the 60s but is still peddling the peace and love, even though a little hard of hearing (and not quite so eye catching in a mini these days.) At a recent meeting of the Borstal Heath Wildlife Group Annual Autumn Seance (to contact deceased and much loved BH naturalists) she was very strange, constantly talking about bio-security and draconian measure to stop importing diseases – never seen her so worked up! And that was despite her munching through quite a few of her delightful cakes she always supplies. Those cakes! We all love them and she refuses to give out the recipe but how we giggle!
We got round to discussing what the BH response should be to the terrible threat of as die-back. Marie Juana was all for putting a cordon around the village and hosing down any passers by with with acid. “But that is a little harsh,” we said “probably some of the trees will survive and we can all have fun planting new ones!” “Trees did you say?” said Marie Juana. “Yes dear, Ash die-back – ash trees!” The look of relief that came over her face was worth a photograph. “I thought it was Hash die-back!” She sobbed with relief. Strange woman.
