Lilac still life; green umbrellas; a flowery strip
Or…Week 17
Hello!
I hope you have had a good week. I keep hearing rumours of warm weather coming, next week we will all be picnicing/sunbathing etc… and yet still here I am sitting at my desk with a hot water bottle on my feet and in a warm cardi. I suppose the may is not really at all out in any great force, and so it is right that we should not shed our clouts, but STILL. This cold spring goes on and on.
However, the plants and season push on anyway, like they can’t help it, luckily for our purposes. Because in this weekly post I write about three seasonal things I have noticed/eaten/sniffed/done this week, and then you tell me yours. We start each week with a round up of your comments. I love it when a theme arises from them, and last week’s were particularly ornithological. The birds have been very busy indeed. Pleasing. Here’s your Week 16:
Several first peonies; sandals coming out of storage; walking home from a 7pm lecture in the light while song thrushes sing; the first cuckoo(!); being woken by the dawn chorus at silly o'clock; lambs playing in the fields; ducks laying beautiful eggs; four eggs in a kestrel nest on the windowsill; red kites soaring; a crowd of dandelion clocks; oxslips peeping up through the lawn; new privacy from a (perfectly lovely, but y’know…) neighbour as the hedge fills with green; starlings stealing cowslips; red mason bees hatching; a polytunnel bursting with seedlings; fuzzy harbour seal pups; just-arrived swallows chattering in the stables; out without a coat for the first time [brave - Ed.]; fledgling robins tumbling from the nest and scuttling around the garden; rescuing a bee with tupperware; making wild garlic pesto; planting the potato patch.
Thank you! What a wonderful picture you all paint week after week, I love it. Here’s my Week 17:
Lilac still life
We have self-sown lilacs along the boundaries of both sides of the garden, this very pale one on one side, and a darker purple on the other. They were there when we moved in nearly 19 years ago and survive all of our and our neighbour’s improvements and whims just by dint of being so very on the edge in both cases. And every year at this time they bloom, so abundant and elegant, they always make me think of 1920s glamour for some reason, and I suppose I fantasise that they might have been there since the first inhabitants planted up the garden on moving in in 1929 (more on this later…). I grabbed this bunch to go in the background of my forthcoming little video on May Day and Beltane (coming tomorrow! Stay peeled…) and plonked them in the vase and…well look at them. You could paint them, just like that.
Green umbrellas
I think because of this newsletter I am observing the changing leaves much more closely this spring, and it is astonishing how much further along horse chestnuts are than any other tree. Just look at them, glorious green umbrellas kicking off the whole canopy business with a bit of panache. Sadly I think because of horse chestnut leaf miner they are also likely to be the first tree leaves to turn brown, as early as July or August. Look at them now, so glorious and green.
A flowery strip
When garden designers talk about consulting the ‘local vernacular’ in designing gardens I have often wondered what they would do when faced with the garden of a house build between the wars, sporting - as mine did when we moved in - a diamond shaped bed in the lawn and crazy paving. Would they keep it? Restore the concrete path that used to run straight down to the end of the garden?
Perhaps they would do something a bit like this. This joyous spring bed is in the front garden of one of my neighours and is filled with wallflowers, tulips and forget-me-nots. It makes me happy every morning when I pass it on the dog walk while also looking a bit like it could have been planted at any time since the 1920s.
That’s it from me. Before I go, I just want to mention that we have a special bluebell thread ongoing where lots of you have been posting your sightings and tracking the peak, but ALSO very usefully, posting your recommendations for excellent bluebell spots, and so passing on the knowledge. Please do pop over and join in with this over the next couple of weeks as the bluebell wave sweeps up through the country. Also don’t forget that we have our chat on Sunday morning over on the chat part of the app, where you can post your pictures (of bluebells…and everything else).
Over to you now. What have you spotted/done/cooked this week?
I posted back in Feb about the whirling dance of the male blackbird to a disinterested female. Well I think he won her round as we have fluffy baby blackbirds in our garden. They have fledged, but hang around on the garden fence chirping for food, as they still are fed by the parents for a while. It’s lovely to see it (sings Circle of Life to myself very badly).
I have already harvested a bowl of green beans from my backyard garden (Texas early growing season) and will likely make a minestrone soup with them. I feel so accomplished. There's nothing like growing your own food (also it's a labor of love and sadness, it doesn't always work out). I also made a Chimichurri sauce with basil and parsley from the garden (served with grilled chicken and flank steak). I drove to north Austin yesterday and there were yellow wildflowers all along the road.