Good news

...And nutters

In Devon, England, two European brown bears named Mish and Lucy became local celebrities after escaping their enclosure. Note, it is not called a “cage.” Concerned with the semantics or not, they made short work of honey, jam, and other supplies, consuming "a week's worth of honey." Then they fell asleep. A very deep sleep for quite a long time.

Meanwhile, in other news, a quick-thinking elephant rescued a drowning gazelle at a zoo in Guatemala. Note, it is still called a “zoo.” Most of us don’t think of “quick” when we think of elephants. Nor of EMTs, as in Elephant Medical Techs. One report in Guatemala called it a startling interspecies display of kindness.

A self-taught gardener named John Massey has spent 27 years transforming the land outside his bungalow into a spectacular four-season oasis now considered one of the finest private gardens in Britain. His backyard, 36 miles west of Birmingham, England, is bursting with blooms.

Since it began as a patch of grass in 1998, the garden has evolved to feature UK plantings alongside rarer and more exotic species from Japan, South Africa, and Turkey. That might be called interspecies cooperation. Flowers, humans, plantings, seeds.

Mr. Massey, who is 76 years old, has planted 20,000 flowers, trees, and shrubs across his ten-acre property which is nestled against the scenic Staffordshire and Worcestershire canal. Despite no formal education, he became a four-time gold medalist at the iconic Chelsea Flower Show.

Mr. Massey opened the garden to the public to raise money for charity—and has so far raised over half a million pounds ($675,000). Mr. Massey says, “We’re all plant nutters and it’s a full-time job looking after it. The main thing is we’ve raised a lot of money for good causes in the process.”

Mr. Massey in his garden

more of Mr. Massey’s garden