Canal stars

A day off jog along NCN75 on the canal towpath in Edinburgh - a great flat place for a sweaty stumble by one who hasn't exercised in a while. A beautiful morning and the canal is hovering between summer and autumn, with bumblebees crawling on mint, and butterflies still floating by, but the willowherb turning wispy and the hawthorn, elder, rose and brambles all popping out clusters of ripening berries. I bumped into Stan - one of our volunteers, who has been doing his own litterpicking on the canal towpath around Wester Hailes for many many years - who had in turn bumped into a local person who was doing the same. A chat was a welcome break from the jogging attempt. Along with a scattering of potato flowers on one access point, the waterside verge is now covered in flowering Michaelmas daisy, named for the feast of St Michael on 29th September and their late flowering around that date. Michaelmas daisies are Asters - named after the Latin word for star. One legend says that the goddess Virgo scattered stardust on the earth and they became asters and the same webpage tells me that Virgil wrote about Michaelmas daisies "There is a useful flower growing in the meadows, which the country folk call star-wort, not a blossom hard to find, for its large cluster lifts itself in air out of one root; its central orb is gold but it wears petals in a numerous ring of glossy purplish blue." Certainly a canal full of stars today.