Two recent roadside artistic interventions between home and village caused some reflection. One – a pair of lost child’s woollen gloves displayed hands up at twigs end – has wit and style. The other hasn’t. Clearly a tall person altered the road sign lettering, or carried a stepladder in their vehicle to do so.
I take stock of activity down on the ponds most days. Delighted to see the water skaters are back. They like to park up on the oval leaves of the water hawthorn, like taxicabs in the rank, waiting to skate away at a moment’s notice across the viscous surface in search of sustenance. Of three pairs of legs each insect has, the middle ones are for rowing while rear and front pairs do the steering. Thick pads of hair repel water, preventing it from sinking while the tips of the steering legs detect tiny vibrations emitted by its even smaller insect prey.
The meadow next to home is slowly filling up with this year’s lambs and unsurprisingly they look a lot happier and healthier as the weather finally perks up. The ewes have been shielding their vulnerable offspring from the deprivations of cold wind and incessant rain. Last week the lambs with their thin fleeces shivering and subdued were seeking shelter with their anxious dams against our garden wall. Our farming neighbours despair at the knock on effects of this wettest of springs.
One long section of our field wall we had rebuilt three years ago. (See ‘A Wall Between Us’ December 2021). That upkeep of that long stretch of meandering stonework is our responsibility, not the farming neighbour’s, so needs keeping a watchful eye on. I’ve plugged gaps in sections by retrieving fallen or buried stones. Here’s a sandstone slab covered in grass and moss dug up and slotted in between the original capstones, well encrusted with colonising lichen.
Spring is synonymous with blossom of course and I have a special affection for the dense exuberance of mazzard (cherry) blossom that sets its heartlands in the north Devon countryside ablaze. Here at home I admire the delicate display our eight years old damson gives out. A robust small tree, it grows surprisingly well considering the exposed location. This variety, Shropshire prune, reminds me of the many damsons that will now be blooming en masse in the Lyth valley, south Lakeland.
If I were a flying insect in our garden though – like this red tailed bumblebee – my blossom favourite would have to be the Skimmia under the kitchen window. This bush’s powerfully enticing aroma gets a host of bees and flies of all types topped up on nectar.
Impressed that the apple mint, planted in error free of its containing pot years back is now escaping garden confinement through fencing into the field beyond. Our neighbours’ Texel tups spend the summer grazing here so they will surely sample it. Mutton and mint. The perfect combo.
The inclement weather has delayed first cutting of garden grass this year. April 16th proved dry, calm and sunny enough to risk firing up the mower to do the first trim.
Looking like dead slugs, the half dozen or so black faeces spied on the lower grass area tells me the hedgehog –in- residence is no longer hibernating but is up and about again in the evenings.
The satisfaction of doing the first mow is to frame the garden’s features – beds, orchard, meadow, ponds, copses, paths et al. The smaller birds, like dunnock and robin seem to appreciate that a slightly shorter sward is easier to quarter in search of worms and insects. The garden now looks refreshed and whole. With more sunshine bathing it in golden light at day’s end our patch presents as near perfect a scene as one could wish for at this turning point in the year.
STEPHEN TOMLIN 