Alder?

After the morning trip to the pond noticed at reference 1, back again in the afternoon, to find that the algae, after a day in the sun, had put out its bright green sheen again.

While the water was creeping up to the top of the spillway.

And then there was the matter of the small tree, growing out of the bank, sporting lots of small fruits. Was it an alder - a tree I associate with bogs and fens, this without being at all familiar with it.

Google Images is happy to agree with me. Common alder (Alnus glutinosa), to be found at reference 2.

The distinctive fruits - a sort of cross between a pine cone and an acorn - turn out to be the female fruits, while I had not noticed the cylindrical male catkins, waiting for next spring. The leaves, some with serrated edges, look about right.

A solitary bullrush on the exit channel.

PS 1: the FT is clearly on a roll with this chicken business. Having noticed one piece at reference 1, there is another one today at reference 3 - and I think that there are more.

I learn that most of the chickens we eat are between 30 and 40 days old, so not much of a life. And that a small number of breeds - say three or four - account for an awful lot of them.

The piece also talks of broiler chickens in broiler houses, which prompted BH to wonder where the word came from. The lazy way forward was to ask Gemini, who, for once, got into a bit of a muddle with layout and input-output, but who did give me the answer.

It seems that one use of the word 'broiler' started with chicken farmers, to whom it means young chickens suitable for fast cooking by direct heat, what we would call frying or grilling. Roasters are slightly older birds, and boilers even older, usually retired egg layers. Presumably the cock of 'coq-au-vin' was originally a retired farm yard cockerel. The term then generalised to chickens mass produced in big sheds generally.

Then in the US, cooks distinguish grilling, with heat below, as in most barbecues, from broiling, with heat above, as in most indoor cookers. Next stop Websters and OED.

PS 2: I have now consulted both OED - where broil gets near a page - and Websters. And had a further interchange with Gemini.

Broiling was indeed hot cooking of any sort. Roasting was a bit cooler and more controlled, in an oven. Boiling was cooler still, in boiling water, in a pot. But in current US usage, grilling is usually outdoors and broiling indoors.

OED goes into the other meanings of broil - as in brawl, embroil and imbroglio. Which, as Gemini explains in the snap above, arises from the conflation of two quite different French words brûler and brouiller.

He even closes with a joke. A bit Pooterish, but a joke nonetheless.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/08/more-water.html.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alnus_glutinosa.

Reference 3: Norway vs the world’s favourite chicken: Billions of meals each year are made from the fast-growing Ross 308 genetic strain of birds. But a backlash is gathering pace - Richard Milne, Susannah Savage, Ian Bott, Financial Times - 2026. 

Group search key: 20260826.