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Plant of the Day
Wednesday 24 December 2025
Providing growing sculptures in the border Taxus baccata (yew) responds well to pruning into topiary shapes. This conifer has the ability to produce epicormic shoots from dormant buds located on the branches or trunk making it ideal for pruning into shapes or rejuvenation if it needs reducing in size.
Jill Raggett
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Tasso comune (Taxus baccata L., Taxaceae) (fiori maschili)
I have to write this rant about the Shepherd King Duology. Because I re-read it and let me tell you; it's one of the best series I've read in ages. The characters, the world building and the writing just pulls you in. I finished both the books in one sitting. All the characters are just so damn loveable with their quirks and signs. And there are a few relationship dynamics that just tug at your heart.
Elm and Elspeth's love hate relationship.
Ravyn and Elspeth's passionate relationship, such that even distance and a king cannot dull it.
Elspeth's father giving her a yarrow every nameday and during the wedding
Elm saying he's better looking than Ravyn
The nightmare constantly thinking everyone is dumb
The nightmare caring for Elspeth like his own child
The nightmare choosing Elspeth over his own descendant
The nightmare saying something and then Ravyn being like "she didn't say that"
The rhymes that are sprinkled throughout the book
The shepherd king's Revenge
Ione's gentle determination and kindness
The shepherd king's kids begging him to come spend time with them
The way the nightmare describes every single character with their respective tree oof.
And this is just off the top of my head. The world building, the Providence cards, the magic system. It was so unique. And the plot twist was literally Chekhov's gun. And the quote "He has looked pain in the eye - and refused to let it make a monster of him". Rachel gillig, the woman you are.
The Shepherd King Duology
Yggdrasil
Yggdrasil is a tree from Nordic myth that acts as an Axis Mundis, a way to connect different “worlds” to the one we know.
The world tree was previously labeled as a European Ash, but research from 1911 suggests it may be a Taxus instead. Taxi were called “needle ash” in Old Norse which may have let to the confusion. The Eddic texts mention Yggdrasil as vetgrønster vida, meaning “evergreen”, which ash trees are not. The importance of evergreens was established well before the Vikings, going as far back as the Iron Age. It is no coincidence that our current Christmas trees are evergreens.
One of the meanings to Ygg is “ageless, everlasting or age-old”, taxi can live tens of thousands of years. Yggdrasil and Odin are completely intertwined, with both the god and the tree representing drift.
Image credit: unknown Danish engraver for Oluf Olufsen Bagge’s “Prose Edda”, 1847
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I love their relationship
Guys, do you think that when Elspeth married Ravyn in the meadow by the room, and her father handed her to Ravyn, another, nearly imperceptible hand lingered on hers a little longer, before she took Ravyn's?
Because that's all I'm thinking about right now.
Taxus brevifolia - Pacific Yew bark detail
