Awake, thou wintry earth

“It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.”

 

A day off and some lovely time gardening.  The weather was changeable; cool in the shade, suddenly warm and lovely when the sun made a rare appearance.  We are trying to tidy up the garden before spring completely arrives.  There are definite signs of spring starting now.  A shrub I've had for a few years is flowering for the first time, it is quite exquisite, but I'm not sure what it is. 

 

Can anyone name this shrub?

 My spring garden is starting to look pretty.  The daffodils are in bud and the primroses and primulas are in full flower.  Tulips and bluebells are further behind, hopefully to greet us in April and May.

Mr C has planted his garlic and is now planting onion sets.  Garlic did well in the garden the last time we tried it, so hopefully we will have a glut.

Garlic

We are also planting several fruit bushes - here are three gooseberry plants, and we have two blackcurrants and a further redcurrant.



Gooseberries

The acid yellow of the spurge or Euphorbia is quite startling and cheers up the garden, most of which is still quite dormant.

 

I may need to make a trip to the garden centre to find another couple of these, they look really good the whole year.  I'm really keen to get on with growing flowers this year, I just need to thwart the slugs and snails!

 

 

In small pockets of the garden however colour and fragrance are appearing. From now onwards, the garden will only get more lush and green and I just cannot wait! 

Awake, thou wintry earth -
Fling off thy sadness!
Fair vernal flowers, laugh forth
Your ancient gladness!
~Thomas Blackburn, "An Easter Hymn"

Glimpses of spring?

Walking in woodland in Devon last weekend we saw a few signs that Spring may be on its way.  March is always a strange month, often you can get several warmer sunnier days and then suddenly the wind rises and the ice and snow appear again.  It is certainly too early to plant very much.  I did notice in Devon the daffodils are starting to come out, so in a week or two ours should appear.  In the meantime, in the woodland and at Hazel Cottage, the snowdrops are charming us.

Funghi doesn't seem to be quite so fussy about temperature as the flowers.  We saw this rather impressive tree funghi.  Does anyone know which one it is?

The primroses are coming up with their dainty pale yellow flowers.

“O fairest flower, no sooner blown but blasted, Soft silken primrose fading timelessly.”

John Milton

 The winter aconites were still plentiful if you knew where to find them.

We also spied the beginnings of ramsons or wild garlic.  Not yet ready to pick, but in a month it should be everywhere!

If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant; if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.
Anne Bradstreet

Tho’ Nature, red in tooth and claw

Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote a rather long elegy called In Memoriam in 1849.  It is a poem written over seventeen years about his grief at losing a friend and is long meditation on God and the reason for human existence and even TS Eliot called it unapproachable.  In spite of the fact that few people manage to read all 100 plus stanzas, it has been influential in giving us two well know phrases.  The first is

'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all

The second is the well known phrase 'Nature, red in tooth and claw' which was meant to describe mankind, though is most often used when humans are rather shocked at how bloody and violent nature can be.  This phrase has been in my mind since we had a visitor to the back garden yesterday.

After a moment of stunned shock at seeing what looked like a bird of prey near to our back door, we took a few pictures of what we've decided is a young sparrowhawk.  He seemed to be a little confused and kept on calling for what we assumed was his mother.  He otherwise just sat on the fence and preened himself for a few minutes until we heard another bird calling and he flew off.  

I half expected to see most of our blue tits and sparrows in small pieces on the lawn, and whilst excited to see this wonderful bird, suddenly concerned about the small birds we love to watch.  But this is a natural way of things, hawks have always hunted small birds, as nature is red in tooth and claw.   On the walk home last night this thought was confirmed when I saw a charming scene of a dead rat in the park, which had been somewhat torn from limb from limb, probably by one of the crows in the area.

In spite of the all this bloodshed, this morning we had a rare sighting of a jay in the garden which was wonderful.  The year is moving on, Mr C is starting to grow his veg seeds in sunny windowsills, the birds are nesting and singing loudly, the days are lengthening and the word is slowly turning green again.

"March is a month of considerable frustration - it is so near spring and yet across a great deal of the country the weather is still so violent and changeable that outdoor activity in our yards seems light years away."
  Thalassa Cruso  

The first day of Spring?

Today is officially the first day of Spring and of course, it is colder and duller than the last week or so.  It is almost as if Spring doesn't want to be pinned down and told when to start!  Everything is starting to bloom and bud in the garden though.  I took a little wander through the garden and took some pictures of the spring that is starting...

 

Everything is unfurling and slowly turning green.  I love this time of year, there seem to be endless possibilities and it all looks so very new.

Flowering currant

Comfrey

Even the roses are starting to bud

We are just back from visiting friends in Norfolk and spent some lovely days on the River Yare and looking at Norwich.  It felt that there were churches every few feet - there are still over 30 medieval churches in the city, most of which have other uses now, but in the early medieval days there were 57 churches just within the city walls!

The River Yare

We also visited the Castle and Cathedral.  The Castle was mostly just the main keep, it once spread across a far larger area, although where it could have fitted amongst all the churches, I don't know. 

 

 

Norwich Cathedral is a rather elegant Romanesque design, the cloisters were my favourite part.  I wonder if we can build some cloisters at Hazel Cottage?!

We ran out of time to visit all the things we wanted to, so we will just have to return one day.  I quite like the idea of visiting all of the 30 odd churches in the one trip, but we will have to see.  There are other adventures and holidays to plan before then.  It has been a long time since we've been to Devon due to weather and busyness, and when I haven't been there for a while amongst the leafy lanes and wild garlic I feel slightly bereft.

The March wind roars
Like a lion in the sky,
And makes us shiver
As he passes by.
When winds are soft,
And the days are warm and clear,
Just like a gentle lamb,
Then spring is here.

Anon

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!

The March of time

After what seems like a long winter, we are finally in the month of March and the promise of spring.  The weather is brighter and the first daffodils are starting to bloom. March was the first month of the year for the Romans who named it after Mars the god of war, and 25th March (often known as Lady Day) remained as the first day of the year until a couple of hundred of years ago.  Although its easy to think that winter is now over, March often has surprises in store - something the Anglo Saxons knew only too well, they named March 'Hlyd monath' - which means stormy month.  Charles Dickens wrote about the changeable nature of it:

It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold:  when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade. 


Despite the warnings, March is a month of much promise and growth.  At Hazel Cottage, the tiny shoots of daffodils of a few weeks ago are now in bud and even a few are flowering and the redcurrant bush we planted is showing signs of budding.  I keep checking the forsythia to see if any of its buttery yellow flowers are appearing yet.  A delicate hellebore I planted last year is looking wonderful, although it appears a little shy, with its flowers facing away from the path as I walk past.   I've decided not to take it personally though!

"The air is like a butterfly
With frail blue wings.
The happy earth looks at the sky
And sings."
Joyce Kilmer, Spring