Swereee swereee!

We've been waiting for the swifts to return.  We've heard rumours that they are back and even heard a very faint sound very high in the sky.  Did I imagine that?  Was it a distant finch or a hoarse sparrow?  Sitting in a pub garden a couple of weeks ago, a friend said "Ah the swifts are back again!".  We turned to look but saw nothing.  Spring has taken its time this year and this last week has been rather cold and wet again.  To use a local word, I even felt completely shrammed* the other day and hid under a blanket.

Then, this morning, the sun was out again, the air was warmer and over my head with a swereee swereee, darting low over the houses were the swifts! 

Swifts always signal the start of summer to me.  These remarkable birds migrate between Africa and Europe every year, coming back to us in April or May and leaving again about August.  They have very short feet, as they rarely settle on the ground, mostly flying or clinging to vertical surfaces.  Even into Medieval times, they were drawn as having no feet at all.  They can spend entire days on the wing, only landing to feed their young or to roost. 

The sight of the swifts screaming across the sky really lifted my mood.  The cold grey rainy days will return soon enough no doubt, but because of the swifts in the blue skies this morning the air was full of possibilities and new life.

"It was an ideal spring day, a light blue sky, flecked with little fleecy white clouds drifting across from west to east.  The sun was shining very brightly, and yet there was an exhilarating nip in the air, which set an edge to a man's energy."
-  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle  

"Every spring is the only spring - a perpetual astonishment."
-  Ellis Peters  

*Southern English dialect word for being very very cold

A sudden burst of creativity...

About six months ago I planned to make a new patchwork cushion to go on our bed.  A few weeks later I cut out the squares and planned how I was going to do it.  Just before Christmas I started hand sewing a few squares together.  Then about March I marked out the rest of the squares.  The half sewn squares looked rather pretty strewn on the table in the study for a few weeks, but they weren't becoming a cushion any time soon.

Spot the bits of material not becoming a cushion, bottom right.

The garden starting calling my time and effort, and there has been a lot of work to be done. This weekend after quite a lot of problems getting the sewing machine to work (due to me probably not understanding the technical aspects), Mr C managed to sort me out. 

We made some bunting to go out the front of the house for next weekend's 'Open Garden' day (terrifyingly we are allowing the people in our church to walk around our garden for charity, more of that next weekend), then I not only started on the cushion but actually finished it entirely and found time to also make a simple dress for my old childhood doll Tina.

Finally completed!!

Tina and her halter neck summer dress and matching hair band!

And now the table in the study just features a small vase of the wonderful lilacs that are gracing the bottom of the garden.  I just hope the lilac will still be out next weekend so people wont notice the weeds at that end of the garden!

I'm really a complete beginner with sewing other than some very simple projects, but I'm so pleased that I've managed to get some bits and pieces done and they don't look too bad.  I will take a picture of the bunting at the weekend, and report back on how the open garden goes....

Sweet May hath come to love us

Sweet May hath come to love us,
Flowers, trees, their blossoms don;
And through the blue heavens above us
The very clouds move on.
Heinrich Heine, Book of Songs

At last we have reached the merry month of May.  This is the time when Spring really has sprung in England.  March is usually too cold or wet for anything much other than snowdrops, April has the joys of daffodils, primroses and forsythia and the trees start to bud.  It is in lovely gentle May that sees the trees bursting with new leaves and blossom exploding all around.  It is May Day today and as if on cue, the sky is blue, the sun is warm and clear and the birds are loud and joyful.

Flowering currant, forget-me-not and pansy.  And a hint of my patchwork cushion, as yet unfinished

Now every field is clothed with grass, and every tree with leaves; now the woods put forth their blossoms, and the year assumes its gay attire.
Virgil

 

"When April steps aside for May,
Like diamonds all the rain-drops glisten;
Fresh violets open every day:
To some new bird each hour we listen."
- Lucy Larcom

 

 

 

"Winter is many months of the year
But now at last Maytime is here;
And birds sing from a leafy screen
In the trees and hedgerow freshly green;
And the wood-anemone is out in the shade,
With its blushing petals which too soon fade;
Once more the bracken is unfurling there,
And bluebells gently perfume the damp air."
- Veronica Ann Twells, Maytime

 

It was the month of May, the month when the foliage of herbs and trees is most freshly green, when buds ripened and blossoms appear in their fragrance and loveliness

Sir Thomas Malory, La Morte d'Arthur 

A typical spring day?

I wondered today whether there was such a thing as a typical spring day.  Early this morning, eating my toast whilst walking through the garden in the warm sunshine.  Picking some lovely spring flowers to decorate the house a little and bring some sunshine in.  Running outside to get the laundry in when there was a shower...  Then back out into the garden to do a lot of weeding.  Then as we came back in, the hail storm started....    Then the sun shone...

"In the spring I have counted one hundred and thirty-six different kinds of weather inside of four and twenty hours." 

Mark Twain

The roofs are shining from the rain,
The sparrows twitter as they fly,
And with a windy April grace
The little clouds go by.
Yet the back yards are bare and brown
With only one unchanging tree--
I could not be so sure of Spring
Save that it sings in me.
- Sara Teasdale, April 

A gush of bird song, a patter of dew
A cloud and a rainbow's warning;
Suddenly sunshine and perfect blue
An April day in the morning!
- Harriet Prescott Spofford

The sun was warm but the wind was chill.
You know how it is with an April day.
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You're one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
a cloud come over the sunlit arch,
And wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you're two months back in the middle of March.
- Robert Frost, Two Tramps in Mud Time, 1926

Easter weekend and the missing simnel cakes

I hope everyone had a lovely Easter, when I thought about my post I had to add in a picture of a lamb.  This one belongs to my sister in law.  It was being taken for a walk a few weeks ago.

A year ago the spring bulbs were out in our garden and looking resplendant in the spring warmth.

This year they are still tightly in bud and despite the increased daylight hours, nothing is warm for very long and they remain closed.   We've read that this has been the coldest Easter weekend for some years, and I must agree as I sit here typing with a blanket on my knees!   I was very pleased to help our church flower ladies this Easter and am really quite proud of my first major display.

I don't know whether its the cold weather, but we've seen some different birds in the garden lately - a pair of wrens flitting around our herb pots near to the back door, and a small group of chaffinches feeding at the end of the garden with the blackbirds.  Mr C has taken a few pictures which I hope to post soon.

We did a lot of cooking over Easter, and instead of my usual large simnel cake I did mini simnel cakes.  I would have taken pictures but they were so lovely most of them have been eaten! I did take a picture of our Easter tree though

I must also continue with my patchwork cushion... 

The pious bird with the scarlet breast

I came home early from work the other day on a beautifully sunny, warm, almost spring like day.  Opening the back door I could hear the melodious sound of a robin singing.  The song was so loud I assumed the robin was nearby however I found him sat at the very top of a tall fir tree two gardens away.  I should have known, the robin can never be said to be shy or quiet!

“The robin flew from his swinging spray of ivy on to the top of the wall and he opened his beak and sang a loud, lovely trill, merely to show off. Nothing in the world is quite as adorably lovely as a robin when he shows off - and they are nearly always doing it.”
Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden 

The song of the robin went on for some time, so long in fact that I had time to go back into the house and fetch Mr C's camera with a decent zoom.  Without knowing much about what setting I should use, I just zoomed madly, and tried not to shake too much.

The robin is a highly territorial bird, who will fight any other robin it assumes is taking over its territory.  This means you will only see the one male bird (and one female during fledging season) within a garden or three. They will sing all year round, even on the darkest winter's day - holding their territory by warning intruders with their song and their red breast.

Eventually the robin was replaced in his singing spot by a magpie, who was probably asserting his authority. 

I did find the robin in a nearby tree still singing away....

 'Art thou the bird whom Man loves best, The pious bird with the scarlet breast, Our little English Robin'. 

William Wordsworth 

 

The March of Winter?

Just under a week ago I was in the garden in shirt sleeves with the sun beating down on a beautiful warm day ripping up vast swatches of ivy and preparing the garden for the growing season.  Today we are reminded that winter hasn't gone quite yet, we woke up today to snow flurries and a fiercely cold wind. 

Daffodills amongst the snow flurries

It feels like winter this year has been icy and neverending, we've had snow several times which isn't usual this far south in England.  Spring will come of course, and we only have to see the flowers that are starting to bloom.

The lovely primrose and lesser celandine peeking through the dead leaves, as if to prove things will grow again.  

When down visiting in Devon we've sometimes heard buzzards circling high overhead, but rarely see anything.  I took this appalling picture which actually shows a buzzard in between the trees.  He did swoop a lot lower but I wasn't fast enough to catch him.  The exciting thing is that when we returned home, we actually saw a buzzard flying high over our garden at Hazel Cottage.  

Spot the Buzzard!  - no prize I'm afraid!

We made some halloumi cheese at the weekend - even though I did everything correctly, when we came to fry the cheese I was convinced that it would melt, but it worked pretty well and kept its shape.  I need to work on draining the whey a bit more, but it otherwise worked.    I will post pictures to this blog soon!