Ruth Brown

This #UKSpringBankHoliday😎don’t just leaf through 300 years of Lee family history, immerse yourself in their company while exploring their grand houses.📖 amazon.co.uk/Lees-Ditchley-…

@AnneKhodabandeh @0Calamity Of course this was Armley's second Green Councillor; we already voted for one the year before. And Reform came second.

@0Calamity In Leeds, everyone is still in shock that Armley Ward elected a Green Councillor. Armley is in Rachel Reeves' Constituency. It has the prison in it. It is very white working class, very poor. It was a natural shoo in for Reform. The Greens ran a fantastic campaign and won.

I've had a rethink. We beat Labour AND Reform in Gorton and Denton even though everyone was saying we never could. People want change, not more of the same. The Greens' role is not to facilitate the resolution of Labour's internal strife. We are here to replace them. What's the worst that could happen? One more Reform MP is the worst that could happen. That is atrocious indeed, but how is that any worse than Labour inveigling the people with yet another claimed Man of the People only for him to take a sharp turn to the right if Burnham does become PM? Increasing Labour's chances of more of the same, forever? We are not their lackeys. We fight. And if we fight, we will win, same as Hannah did. Let's go for it.

Every Honeycrisp apple is a clone of a single tree planted at the University of Minnesota in 1962. Every one. Apple seeds are random. Plant a Honeycrisp seed and the new tree produces a small, sour apple that’s usually inedible. So apple growers do something old and clever. They cut a small branch off the original Honeycrisp tree, slot it into a slit in a young apple sapling, wrap the joint, and wait. The branch fuses to its new host and starts producing Honeycrisps. About 20 million Honeycrisp trees exist worldwide, every one a piece of that 1962 tree on different roots. Same goes for Gala, Fuji, Pink Lady, Granny Smith. Every Granny Smith on Earth traces back to a seedling found in 1868 by a woman named Maria Ann Smith in Australia. She’d thrown French crab apple cores onto her compost heap, one of them sprouted, and the apples it bore were unusually tart and good for cooking. That one tree is the ancestor of every Granny Smith in every grocery store on the planet. Wine has the bigger story. In the 1860s, a tiny aphid called phylloxera caught a boat from America to France, hidden in some grapevine cuttings. It eats grape roots. French vines had no defense and started dying everywhere. Within 15 years, French wine production crashed from about 11 billion bottles a year to 3 billion. The blight then tore through Italy, Spain, and Germany, and European wine was on the edge of collapse. The rescue came from Missouri and Texas. American grapevines had grown up with phylloxera and were immune to it. So growers chopped French grape varieties off at the trunk and joined them to American roots. Above the soil: still French grapes. Below the soil: aphid-proof American root. It worked. Today, almost every bottle of French, Italian, Spanish, Australian, and Californian wine you’ve ever drunk sits on top of an American root. The technique is ancient. Chinese farmers were grafting trees by 1000 BCE. A Greek medical text from 424 BCE describes it casually, like it was already old news. It works because plants don’t have a rejection system the way animals do. Cut two branches. Match the green layers just under the bark. Wrap them tight. In a few weeks the plumbing has fused into a single plant. A Syracuse University art professor named Sam Van Aken has spent 18 years building a single tree that grows 40 different fruits: peaches, plums, apricots, cherries, nectarines, almonds. In spring it blossoms in pink, white, and crimson all at once. He’s made more than a dozen. They sell for up to $30,000 each. Without grafting, there would be no commercial apple industry, no global wine industry, and most of the heirloom fruits humans have bred over the centuries would have gone extinct. One clean cut, and you’ve kept entire species alive.

@ftweekend if only | could read the article...

Without warning, Britain’s heritage charity has axed many of its most remote, most unique holiday cottages. The move, and the lack of warning, have prompted dismay and anger: ft.trib.al/1v9c4Ab

An observation test for your inner 8-year-old. Can you spot the 6 creatures hidden in the picture? From Treasure magazine, 1965 Official answers coming soon (Even if you don’t reply, could you please ‘like’ or share this one?)

@GalanthusA @cnocbeag @PhilNvestigates No conspiracy theory too ridiculous to spread to his cult followers; funny if they all suffered from it...

@Basiliscoe @cnocbeag @PhilNvestigates Is it low intelligence? Anything to get attention? Or a combination of both? Definitely has no idea what he is talking about with this well known virus been around and studied for many years. Science isn't a strong point with "Pastors" like him.

An autocratic figure needs to seize political power and take away the right of women to vote because, when left to their own devices, women “vote for being raped,” a trio of Christian nationalist pastors agreed in a recent podcast. (Link below)

@GalanthusA @cnocbeag @PhilNvestigates Anyway no need to worry as he is now frothing at the mouth over what he assumes is a fake plague.

@cnocbeag @PhilNvestigates They should keep quiet about their fantasies about women wanting to be raped. That can lead to men behaving very badly. Webbon had affair with one of his congregation before marrying so I wouldn't put anything past him. A woman would be quite safe with Robinson though 🤣😂

@GalanthusA @cnocbeag @PhilNvestigates Mr Robinson was very admiring of the Tate brothers. And the other Robinson. Perhaps his hatred and jealousy of women has something to do with the current Archbishop of Canterbury.

NEW PUBLICATION! Bringing to life a #SocialHistory of the Lee family of Knights, Baronets & Earls of Litchfield during the #16thCentury, #17thCentury & #18thCentury. THE LEES OF DITCHLEY & THEIR GRAND HOUSES - Visited by Tudor, Stuart & Windsor Monarchs. amazon.co.uk/Lees-Ditchley-…

Little known secret that the EU designed this environmentally friendly bottle cap to frustrate, enrage, and befuddle low intelligence MAGA and brexiteer middle-aged 'conservative' men. It works 100% of the time.

@realmikolson He wants her job. And the influence and attention that goes with it.

1. Notice guys like Calvin Robinson say nothing when Thomas Massie remarried in less than 1 year after his wife died of cancer. That’s all fine and dandy for them. But 2. When Erika Kirk attends a banquet and takes a photo with a reporter? It’s apparently a violation of “social etiquette” and is “ghastly.” The rich irony is, what Calvin is doing is politically performative.

A very Happy #WorldPenguinDay from the Falkland Islands! 🐧 One of the world's great penguin capitals, our Islands are proudly home to over one million penguins and five different species. 🇫🇰

@FortressLugh This was also claimed way back in the 1970s when I was a student....

A new theory proposes that the Book of Kells is Pictish. There is some good research backing up the claim. Even Trinity College Dublin considers it a realistic possibility now that cannot be dismissed out of hand, though is not yet conclusively proven. Either way, the Pictish and Scottish Christians were working closely together, influencing each other.

The ‘Enstone Marvels’, seen by #CharlesI & #Henrietta, 1636. The Queen was so captivated she bade them be named after her! In disrepair by 1674 the ‘Marvels’ were renovated by #EdwardHenryLee #1stEarlofLitchfield. THE LEES OF DITCHLEY & THEIR GRAND HOUSES amazon.co.uk/dp/B0GWCKCYLC/

A lovely clip of Daphne Du Maurier aged 64. I miss this generation of women who looked as they were and felt no shame. Refusing to be crushed by ageist, sexist expectations & not being modified to look 35 forever. #actingYourAgeCampaign #DontCastHerOut

@GalanthusA @cnocbeag To be fair, she is clearly mentally ill. Needs our compassion, and hopes that she gets over this dependence on dodgy priests.

@cnocbeag Posts a lot like that even attacking priests (other than her favourite Calvin Robinson). No wonder she spends so much time praying & attending church (which she posts about) anybody with such vile views must be very disturbed & needs to try to redeem her evil self.

That took real effort.

We’ve submitted an objection to plans to demolish the Railway Bell in Lambeth. 📣📣📣 The proposal would see this locally listed building demolished to make way for new apartments, with no clear evidence that it couldn’t continue as a pub, or be adapted for a new use. Places like this hold stories, memories, and a sense of belonging that can’t easily be replaced for their local communities. We’re calling on Lambeth Council to refuse this application. Find out more about the campaign to save the Railway Bell and how you can show your support 👉 railwaybellfriends.org Read our full response 👉 casework.jcnas.org.uk/appl/215997

Miss Jane Webster and Miss Marrable, c.1843-48, photo by Robert Adamson and David Octavius Hill, Scottish photography pioneers (National Portrait Gallery, London).

@GalanthusA In the year of our Lord 2026, who would have thought the internet would be so full of men in frocks pretending to be Fathers and Bishops...

Another one letting people think he is Roman Catholic by calling himself Catholic like Calvin Robinson does then. Seems a lot of larping going on.

Charles II Presented with a Pineapple c.1675-80, Unknown artist (Royal Collection Trust, HM CIII)