Sage - and Balance

I don't know what to make of this: the sage in my garden is getting scrubby. 
There will be enough leaves for Saltim bocca, but it makes me nervous that - on a higher level - it foretells change in hierarchical order. 
We have two sage-bushes: the one near the house seems a bit lackadaisical this year. The second bush has almost disappeared in the sea of evening primroses at the back of the garden: where I was too polite to say "No!" to the evening primroses, they now whisper in a soft moonlight yellow voice "No!" to me and block even the way to the red currants. (Only the birds are happy about that). 
And so this year the sage didn't grow as ample as usually. 
That makes me fret - somewhere I've read that there is an English saying: 
"If the sage thrives and grows, 
The Master's not the Master and he knows." 
A colleague of mine is utterly convinced that women who are more leading in life will become the mothers of sons. I do have a son. And surely I'm not a meek little flower. 
But since I stand in front of two full-grown 2 meter-men (husband: 1.98m; son 2.02m; both lithe and lissom and as pretty as a picture, but I deviate...), sometimes I feel a little bit ... reduced. 
Does the sage sense this? Where is my sceptre, where my crown? 
Speaking of crowns I think of the Quenn and then again of mothers. 
Sage, salvia officinalis, is the Queen Mum of all herbs. It is utterly versatile: it helps against a sore throat, as a herbal tea it shall reduce strong perspiration, and because of its hormone-adequate substances it is traded as a secret weapon against climacteric disorders. 
It sounds like a miracle drug, and actually one of the questions at the Medical School of Salerno in the 14th century was: 
"Why shall a man die, in whose garden sage is growing?" (Cur moriatur homo, cui Salvia crecit in horto?) 
Why indeed? 
As I discovered this interesting question, I rushed to buy another pot of sage at the farmer's market - just in case... 
Alas - then I had to discover that this question sadly was only a rhetorical one. 
The answer was: "Because against death there is no cure." (In Germany we say: "Against death there grows no herb.") 
So there bursts the bubble of the dream of immortality! 

But I can recommend the divine recipe of Saltim bocca - as comfort food. 

Dipsomaniac Hedgehogs

In TV they said that quite a lot of English hedgehogs have a real problem: dipsomania. 

Though poets like Shakespeare and von Schiller praise  "the milk of human kindness", these British hedgehogs, instead of lapping up that sort of milk from Hyacinth Bucket's 'Royal Doulton hand-painted periwinkle' plates, inspect the gardener's cunning beer traps for slugs and drink that amber nectar in one go. Or enjoy a little sip here, a little sip there, taking the slug-trap as a punch bowl with added slugs instead of strawberries. As likely as not they then will run zigzag across the carefully cultivated lawns, bawl loud soccer songs and tumble utterly pisseded on theirs pricky sides, slurring "I'm your mate, and I will stand by you..."
The German Hedgehog Society (that is not an invention of mine - they really do exist!) state that these stories must be utterly untrue - shocking horror stories invented by gutter press . They demand proof - evidently a German hedgehog doesn't drink beer. (You bet...) 
But I can understand the British: nowadays you have to search a long time to find milk that tastes delicious and not like the cardboard box it comes in.
Maybe when milk tastes like milk again, the hedgehogs will become teetotallers and abstain from beer - although, come to think of it: why should they?
Cheers!