Week 16
Oak flowers
Hello!
I hope you have had a good week. Mine has been pretty much bedbound and so I have very few seasonal things to tell you and you will have to fill me in.
Luckily for me this is our community post in which we all share the various seasonal things we have spotted this week, and so you can catch me up. I tell you mine and then you tell me yours. Here’s mine:
Oak flowers
Before I took to my bed in the manner of a grand Edwardian lady I was walking in the woods and plucked this bunch of oak leaf and flower from the ground. I am almost certain that the oak leaves are out significantly earlier than they normally are, and I think also that they are out before the ash.
Ash before oak, in for a soak,
Oak before ash, in for a splash
Which always puzzled me as it sounds very like we are going to get wet either way but apparently the splash implies we will not have much rain in the season ahead. Poor wildlife. But also: I’ll believe it when I see it.
Anyway I wisely put it in a glass on my bedside table and it has been keeping me company all week and dropping sherbet green pollen among my pretty things. The painting is of me, aged about 9, by my great step aunt. The other painting is I think the only piece of art I have bought for myself and I love it so much. I can’t remember the name of the artist (and if anyone knows I would love to know - I fantasise about buying one of her huge cloudscapes when I am very rich). The pebbles were collected from various south coast beaches.
Before I go, it is of course Good Friday and I have written on Scribehound Gardening all about the the lore that you must plant your potatoes on Good Friday, and the very satisfying link to lunar planting. You can read your first article for free, and it is currently only £1 for your first month’s subscription.
That’s it from me. Next week I hope to be out stomping the woods again, which I believe are about now reaching their most beautiful, by the way, wild garlic flowers, bluebells and cow parsley. If ever there was a week (or two) to be in the woods it is this one (or these ones), so do get out there.
Now over to you. What have you noticed, done or eaten this week that felt particularly ‘this week of the year’? What have I missed? Answers in the comments below, please.
Saw three tiny baby moorhens for the first time on a family jaunt to Rother Valley Country Park near Sheffield. Unlike other baby birds they weren't brown/stripey, but tiny carbon copies of their parents with black fluffy feathers and red beaks 🥹
The beautiful puffy pink and white blossom starting to drop and be scattered in the wind like nature's confetti.
The sentinel robin sitting high on top of the fir tree in my parents' glorious garden, singing it's heart out for hours on end.
I came across a parade of the tiniest mallard ducklings following mum to water. She hopped down the bank and they tentatively started to make their way across a fallen tree stump before losing their balance and plopping down into the water one by one. None worse off for their adventure.