Cuckoo!

I’ve just taken Charlie for a short walk along the lane to blow the cobwebs away. The gorse is in full bloom and the grass verges either side of the lane, awash with bluebells, look like ditches full of water on a clear day. There is cow parsley, red and white campion and tiny tiny pinky-mauve bells of whinberries on the walls. The bracken is starting to open, it’s new growth always a wonderful lime green, and the violin heads of fiddle ferns are slowly unravelling.

The blackthorn is greening, the remains of it’s flowers still on the bush, dried and faded like last weeks confetti. The hawthorn buds are just beginning to open, there would have been plenty of sprays of blossom for Beltane headdresses this year.

There is, as usual a strong breeze from the sea. Where the lane follows the hill round, the noise of the wind through the blue fir sounds like a car approaching, I always have to stop and double check. It plays each metal gate post like a pan pipe, each has it’s own tone and pitch. In the pause between gusts, I can just pick up the call of a cuckoo in the valley. Hurrah! Summer is a comin’ in!

 

The First Cut

We have had two consecutive days of sunshine (not that you can tell from the photo!) combined with a strong wind; and I have finally been able to get in the garden and cut the lawn. Being the first cut,  the mower was on the highest setting and although only a barrow load of cuttings was removed, it has levelled everything out and it looks so much better. By the time I’d got to the orchard I was starting to flag, so that has been left for another day. I did cut a loop round the paddock with a detour to the compost bins, because that means I can take the dogs out without getting the bottom of my jeans soaked. The grass in there is much higher than the garden, and so I hope the good weather returns quickly – today it is back to the usual cloud and rain – as it will be a bother to cut if it gets any higher.

The snowdrops and crocus are over, and now we have a variety of daffodils and hellebores in flower, dotted around the beds and beneath the shrubs. The hawthorn trees are just showing green and the damson/plum tree is flowering. All the beds are in desperate need of a weed and we have some tree work to attend to. The winter winds brought down a willow and another trunk of our privet ‘tree’. There is one remaining trunk and I think that will have to come down too and the tree returned to being a bush.

Other signs of spring were a number of bumble bees and other insects buzzing around enjoying the sunshine and warmth; and a small brown dog taking up his usual fair weather position sunbathing on the slates outside the kitchen door.

 

Winter Cheer

The kitchen/living room side of the cottage smells beautiful at the moment. I always have a pot of hyacinths at this time of year and it lifts the spirits at a time that always reminds me of Narnia under the reign of Jadis The White Witch. A period of ice and darkness, when ‘it’s winter, and has been for ever so long, always winter but never Christmas’  With no big holidays to look forward to for a while winter often feels like it’s stretching on indefinitely.

It has been a beautiful sunny day here but very cold. We walked along the lane for half an hour and Charlie amused himself by running up and down the walls. In the summer he is listening out for mice and will occasionally disgrace himself by pouncing and digging out their nests – little balls of dried grass. Today he was sniffing out fox and hare trails across the lane. There were patches of herb robert in flower in sheltered spots and clumps of new growth on the weeds in the verges. In the garden the bulbs are showing, Imbolc is just around the corner!

Snowdrops

 

Snowdrops are not innocent:
They fight for what they win.
Beauty’s what comes out:
Blind energy goes in.

J B Pick

We have had five days of mostly dry, calm weather. This morning we have glorious sunshine too, with just enough warmth in it for me to sit outside and eat breakfast. It  picked out the new growth, tiny whorls of leaves, on the hardy fuchsia at the end of the house. This was christened ‘the buzzing bush’ by Lindsey the first summer we were here because the flowers are always covered in bumblebees. The sparrows love it too, it’s a good bit of cover close to their nests under the eaves of the barn and to the bird feeders. They usually pelt about in chattering gangs of three or four, and are so tame that if you’re sitting on the bench under the window you’ll be fanned by their wings as they fly past.

In the beds there are a few hellebores and snowdrops in flower, the snowdrops seem early to me, maybe it’s because its been a wet and mild winter so far. There’s only three weeks to Imbolc, I think there will be snow on the way before then, time to make sure there’s bread and milk in the freezer.

I steeled myself to go and take a photo of a clump of the snowdrops hiding between boulders on the bed below the damson tree. I haven’t been on the lawn since I fell and damaged myself last month – I’m beginning to worry about losing my nerve! I expect once I feel more balanced and back to normal I’ll feel different. We have some huge mole hills which Ste will have to clear up now he’s at home; I noticed that the soil on the sunny side of each little barrow has completely dried out.

 

Introducing the Neighbours

 

I managed a short walk yesterday, with Ste wrangling Charlie and my daughter’s dog, Jess ( a bit of a puller!) whilst I had Tilly who is slow and steady as befits her advanced age. We dawdled behind the others. It was a dull overcast day and the low clouds had left a veneer of water over everything. My nerves are a little shot, and the slope up the drive and the muddy road saw me taking pin steps, choosing my ground carefully to avoid anything slippy.

The land around three sides of us changed hands last year and now we have new neighbours. Behind us we have celebrity sheep, owned by the National Trust, who have been brought down from Snowdon to overwinter here. They are Welsh Mountain sheep, Rob says they come down on the thin side and will return in the Spring ‘as round as apples’.

Below us, the other side of two fields of kale, are Rob’s Welsh Mountain Black cattle, eight little heifers, so alike I can’t tell them apart. In a few weeks they’re to have the bull run with them, and then, if the kale ever gets high enough, in March they will be in the fields by the cottage. This will make the dogs lives a little more interesting!

There is red campion flowering along the lane, the gorse, which always seems to have one or two flowers whatever the time of year, is now covered in blossom. The hazel is sporting catkins and the bulbs we planted in the autumn are showing in the beds and tubs. The wheel is always turning.

The Neighbours

It was raining most of last night which cheered me up no end as I lay in bed listening to it hammering down on the roof. My hayfever is terrible at the moment and I’m spending my time holed up in the house as much as possible.

Fortunately there’s good entertainment outside. The house nestles into the hillside with the lane at it’s back and has four tiny waist height windows which look out over the dry stone wall that supports the road. It is a miniature fairy landscape of ferns, the yellowy white flower spikes of pennywort and various other tiny wildflowers (which I’m hoping to teach myself the names of soon). At the front, the two doors, each with a small window either side, look out across the garden, then fields and woods across to the hills.

We have a hawthorn and two plum trees directly in front of the house which are hung with a variety of bird feeders and have a steady stream of visitors. The bird life is completely different to our old house. No wood pigeons, black birds, blue tits or jackdaws, but we do have chaffinch, lesser spotted woodpeckers, a collared dove, sparrows, magpies and jays. The corvids here have taught themselves to eat from the peanut feeders by forcing the lid up with their beak and shoving their head in, which is something I’ve not seen before and really impressed me – they’re clever! One bird I was upset not to find in the garden at first was a robin, but then I spotted one a couple of days ago and I immediately felt much better.

Our largest and noisiest bird visitors are the pheasants, there are a pair and a single male. It didn’t take Charlie long to realise they visited regularly and he takes great delight in scooting round the beds and chasing them. They take off pretty clumsily with a great deal of croaking but always managed to escape, until today that is, when Charlie caught one against the fence. Thankfully I don’t think he knew what to do with it, and intimidated by it’s size he just stood looking at it in a bewildered sort of way until it took off, after which he did his usual victory lap of the garden with a silly doggy grin on his face.

We also have swallows nests on the back of the house – now all fledged and performing acrobatics overhead. We had a pair go into the workshop and land on the beams which was fascinating as I’d never seen them so close before.

There are three horses in the field which has made my pony mad inner child very happy. They’re pretty skittish and I have only managed one little stroke but are happy to come up and see what you’re doing from a safe distance (and eat our shrubs through the fence) They absolutely love the dogs though and will run across the field to come and touch noses, if the excitement is too much and the dogs start to bark they toss their heads and make a big show of being frightened and backing off, only to come straight back again seconds later. It’s fascinating to watch how they interact with each other too. The black is blind in one eye which is a shame as they’re a  good looking bunch. The heavier looking one in the centre is in charge!

Along with the horses there is one solitary sheep which I feel really sorry for. I think it must be either a companion for the horses (although they never seem to be together) or else someone’s pet as it’s very friendly and often comes up to the gate if it sees you in the garden, especially if your holding some sort of container. However it is not keen on the dogs and once it realised they were here it kept it’s distance. The sheep can get into our paddock but the horses can’t much to their dismay, they keep rattling the fencing poles and squeezing their heads through – the grass is much better our side.

The field the other side of the paddock holds eleven huge (but only half grown) beef cattle, some of which have horns. They’re beautiful, but display the sort of loutish behaviour crowds of young lads exhibit at times. When they rush the gate to stare at you, snorting and rolling their eyes, it can be a bit intimidating. However I take comfort in something my great uncle used to say (he was a farmer) bulls are not as dangerous as cows – bulls drop their head and close their eyes when they charge so you can dodge them, cows keep them open!

Other wildlife found on our walks down the lane have been a lizard basking on rocks, a wild honey bee nest in an old ash tree, and this afternoon, a tiny little baby shrew running along the grass in the centre.

Wildwood–Beltane 2016

This morning we had our Beltane Ritual on Lindow Moss. The day started out with clear blue skies, but by the time we were parking the cars it had started to drizzle and it kept it up for a few hours. So much for the summer weather!

I spent ten minutes in the garden just before I left, to gather some bits and pieces for the Greenman. I’d spotted a little bit of early may in bloom in a local hedgerow and stopped off to cut a little. There were plenty of buds but only a few flowers, I looked through my photos earlier, and the last time we had swathes of may blossom was in 2009! That year we had headdresses, decorated staves,  a huge display round the altar and plenty to hand out in the ritual itself.

Our work to restore the Moss is on-going, although there has been more peat removal and drainage channels dug, the actual area around our ‘grove’ has mysteriously been left alone and the greenery is starting to make it’s way back. I just wish the whole area could return to Nature.

What would the world be, once bereft

Of wet and of wildness ? Let them be left,

O let them be left, wildness and wet ;

Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

(Gerald Manley Hopkins, Inversnaid)

This pine was growing here 5000 years ago!

At the entrance to the peat workings there are three little hawthorns. The first was just coming into flower, so I could have saved myself the stress of searching for blossom!

This year’s poem is described as a Druid’s Devotional and is apparently from the Solitary Druid Fellowship, although I can’t find a working link to them. It may originally been used by the ADF.

I breathe in the fire of the sun!

This world is alive, and I am alive with it!

The fire in my heart is a Beltane fire,
A fire raging with passion and purpose!

Today I honour the sun,
And the movement of the earth.
The Earth Mother provides,
And the Sky Father encourages
New life on the land.

This is the moment to remember
That even while I practice in solitude
I am a living being, interconnected with all life.

I am the tree. I am the river.
I am of the earth, growing into fullness,
Supported by the Kindred.

Hail, the fire of Beltane!

fb Nature Photography Challenge

February

There’s going to be a fair amount of catching up to do on the blog as I try and fill in the missing months! To start here are the remaining photos in the Nature photography challenge I took part in back in February, this was to post a photograph a day for seven days.

As I did nothing but travel to work and back I had to concentrate on the garden, so we had dogwood in the early morning sunshine. There’s something about the slanting light that brings out the vibrant colour.

This was followed by a tiny clump of moss, about 2cm across that was beginning it’s bid to envelope an old pallet at the end of the garden. I do love moss, I think it’s the idea of a miniature world. It reminds me of making tiny gardens in an old seed tray when I was a child. I adore mini flowers too like speedwell and violas, and alpines, oh and tiny succulents … well you get the idea!

The next day we had more really bad weather and I had to find a bit of nature indoors. This amaryllis bulb was a present from a friend, if you look after them amaryllis will flower every year, but there’s no denying that for 11 months out of twelve you will end up looking at two or three floppy leaves, which I always find rather sad. I must admit, that with the odd exception, I do prefer garden plants over houseplants!

The last day I took a shot of the largest of the three oak trees at the bottom of our garden. It’s my guardian tree. I sit against it’s trunk to meditate. It stands over my stone circle, there is a Faery Altar at it’s foot and there are entrances to Other Worlds in it’s roots

I really enjoyed this challenge as it made me change the way I look at things. It’s too easy to get in a rut, and walk around with blinkers on, it was good to see things with fresh eyes.

Valentine Day Frogs

We’ve had a few days of beautiful dry and sunny weather. My mum said she heard the local weatherman report that the North West only had three days without rain between October and February so you can imagine how pleased we are to see blue skies!

To celebrate Mr Stoatie and I took the netting off the ponds before the frogs decided to get amorous and move around looking for fun – we have a constant worry that they might get trapped in the nets if we leave it too late. There was just one female frog in the large pond closest to the house, but the small top pond had seventeen snoozing in the mud and leaves, including a couple who were clinging together.  It is always difficult trying to hold frogs at the best of times, but mucous and mud coated ones add extra comedic effect. As did the layer of ice that came off with the net and which meant we also struggled with freezing cold hands.

It doesn’t seem to matter how we organise the poles and floats, or how tight we peg the netting, leaves still seem to gather and sink below the surface, and that’s where the frogs choose to dream out the winter. At least we can hoick the leaves out easily, oak takes so long to decompose that they’re still intact too.

The photo above is one I took for a facebook challenge – to post a nature picture every day for seven days. It’s the reflections in the top pond, taken before we removed the netting. The wind ruffling the net created some wonderful effects. I’m only half way through the challenge, it’s making me really have to look at the garden carefully (since I haven’t been out anywhere interesting), which can only be for the good. My other pictures so far are:

A Collared Dove. When we first moved here, we used to have 10-15 of these Collared Doves in the garden at the same time. As the Wood Pigeons increased, the doves disappeared, and now we only have a single pair. The species are Southern European in origin, but have been slowly spreading northwards (an early climate change indicator maybe?) The first pair arrived in the UK in the mid 1950s and their descendants have been spreading round the country ever since. I wonder if they’re getting crowded out now the farmers don’t shoot pigeons anymore.

Early Crocus. We have several clumps of these around the garden now, they seem to self seed easily which is great. The other blooms we have out at the moment are snowdrops, polyanthus, heather, and a completely out of sync liverwort!

Spring has Sprung?

As you know it’s traditional for us to announce the arrival of Spring here in the North West by sharing news of our spotting the first Bread and Cheese in the hedgerows – that’s new hawthorn leaves to the uninitiated. So here’s a blurry photo of Bread and Cheese taken during this afternoon’s dog walk. There were also hazel catkins, sticky buds and both daffodils and lungwort in full flower!

We’ve had months of mild, dull and wet weather here, the ground is waterlogged and everywhere is muddy, although today there was glorious sunshine and a slight chill in the air. I’m actually looking forward to a good cold snap, although it’s going to be a bit hard on all the plants that have decided that it’s time to sprout!