Better No Plants than Sick Plants! Eighteen months ago box blight descended.  Either side the path I had low rows of dwarf box, Buxus suffruticosa, and beautiful they looked too.  Then in the cold damp summer my bright green box turned dull brown.  They became two rivers of death. Box blight attacks box leaves and stems and is caused by two fungi specific to box.  Dwarf box is particularly vulnerable, but the common box, Buxus sempervivens, is more resistant, and my topiary balls of ordinary box emerged virtually unscathed.  The blight is spread by wind and rain.  It has plagued the whole...

LUXOR. Our 7th visit. Luxor Temple, not crowded because the tourists have flown.  A stall offers free booklets on Why Islam is the Tolerant Religion and Why Allah is God of All, and Bob picks up one for his friend Colin Gilbert, a creationist.  The Avenue of sphinxes, the towering pylons with slots for flag poles, the temple of the sacred barque, the hypostyle hall, Alexander the Great’s additions, the nubile breasts of Ramasses II’s daughter who reaches to his knee, a carving of the cow goddess Hathor and, lines of oblong indentations in the walls where people scraped dust for unknown holy...