Kew, and back to The Hive

First, the picture postcard view.  When I arrived at Kew this morning, it was looking impossibly beautiful.

I'd come for a couple of meetings, but also to see what The Hive is like in winter.  Maybe it wasn't quite wintery enough, because it was still humming away - a low hum, which one might even call an underhum - but still giving the impression of some wings reverberating in a hive, somewhere.   But there were still plenty of flowers in bloom in the gardens - lavender, wild roses - which presumably would furnish a little nectar for wandering bees.  There hasn't been a hard frost yet. I don't recollect there being bird song on the sound tape before, but that - coupled with some geese honking away outside - was, well, very un-bee like. That's to be pursued ... 

One of the things that struck me very strongly, though, was a different form of organicism: the Hive structure took on something of the appearance of bare branches.

And here it is, looming, a bit like a geodesic dome, behind a plane tree.

Elsewhere, plants are getting trimmed and chopped and winterized;

and inevitably it became grey and clammier.

Back inside, I was thrilled to have a tour of the Economic Botany collection - fascinating curatorial organization by raw materials, not finished artifacts, and yet they were, co-existing, on the shelves - raw rubber next to the world's first (1817) rubber flask.  And yes - a real, original, let's-get-plants-to-Kew Wardian Case.  You can't imagine (well, I know a couple of you can) how exciting I found this encounter with what's almost a legendary object.