Everything’s blooming in the garden

“Britain’s gardens have never been in better nick,” says The Economist. Confined to their homes, people are “manicuring their hedges and lavishing attention on vegetable patches”. Indeed, official statistics show that 45% of Britons are coping with lockdown by gardening – “slightly more than are cooking or reading”. This national obsession should stand the country in good stead during the lockdown. “Even as plans for holidays and parties are being cancelled, imagining that a bunch of dull-looking seeds will transform into bright blooming flowers requires faith in the future.” Indeed, studies suggest gardening is associated with reductions in depression and anxiety. Gardens have been “so central to the lockdown experience, they have become a political issue” – those lacking them are often cited as examples of how the effects of the pandemic are “unevenly felt”. Boris Johnson spent much of his Tory leadership campaign in garden centres and is “likely to heed pleas from plant-sellers to be allowed to reopen”: more than two-thirds of growers’ sales are in the spring. And we could certainly all do with a few more “green shoots”.

Grimes said in February that she planned to allow the child, a boy, “to choose its own gender”. That might explain the name the couple has chosen, said The Guardian. According to Musk, the baby will be called “X Æ A-12 Musk”. There are “several working theories” on how to pronounce this, and what it might mean. But some reckon it may mark the peak of weird celebrity baby names. With all the “Daeneryses, Marvels and Teslas running around” (141 babies were named for Musk’s automotive brand in 2017), prepare for the new vogue of boring names.