A little bonus pic here of my littlest dog looking like she is sniffing the bluebells at Prior’s Wood, where I went for a walk with my mum last weekend. This picture doesn’t even slightly show the majesty. The bluebells there are astonishing.
Hello! What a difference a little bit of sunshine makes, shame we didn’t get it at the weekend…
This is my regular weekly post in which I tell you three things that have felt particularly ‘this week’ about my week, three things I have noticed, heard, eaten or done that are particularly seasonal. Then in the comments you tell me yours, and we kick off each week with a round up of them. Here’s your Week 18:
A pond full of tadpoles; the Beltane fires on Calton Hill; mint green new leaves of the whitebeam trees mingled with pink blossoms; brushing tomato seedlings and getting that delicious tomato leaf smell; morning sunlight bringing children into bed pre-6am; pink and white curling crab apple blossom like rhubarb and cream sweets; a May Day posy of hawthorn, lilacs, cuckoo flowers, queen Anne’s lace and alexanders; a May Day bonfire with cherry liquor and glowing lanterns; an evening watching the first swallows swooping above, catching flies and chattering noisily; ducklings a plenty on the canal; wood violets like blue stars on the land; frothy forget-me-nots; being entranced by soft new leaves and even a beautiful hairy one; daisies echoing the increasing length of the unmown grass, so they are excellent for daisy chain making; a kaleidoscope of peacock butterflies; frothy clouds of flowering cow parsley; the hornbeam hedge turning green; a late rain to revive the California super blooms - fragrant purple lupine and orange poppies; an enormous hare, apparently gazing moonwards; the first garden-picked mint tea of the year; blooming baby leaves - tiny maple, tiny gingko, tiny oak; a beautiful blue birds egg on the ground (perhaps a dunnock); yellow everywhere - abundant yellow gorse and fields of oil seed rape.
Glorious! What a week, and reminded me that you might like this lovely walk I took through frothy cow parsley this week.
Onto my week 19:
May flower
The May is blooming. A little late this year for all the freezing reasons, but it is definitely underway in my neck of the woods, though not yet at its peak. Currently it’s just the odd plant and occasionally a group of them, as here. The peak is usually in a week or so’s time in the south of England I think, because I always associate it with the train journey to Chelsea Flower Show in late May, which is just magnificent. I arrive and wonder yet again why so few gardens ever make use of this so-lucky timing. A mystery. It’s beautiful.
In flower it reminds me of those beautiful golden fireworks that don’t make much noise but each stream thickens out into a sleeve of twinkling gold. Beauties.
The play tree lives
One stormy autumn night a couple of years ago, one of a row of great lime trees on the common came crashing down. The next morning I went to see it. It lay stretched out across the common like a fallen giant, and we could walk among its still-leafy crown and run our hands over the lofty parts of it that only the birds and the aphids were ever meant to touch. It felt oddly intimate and faintly inappropriate, but also strange and sad and beautiful, like looking into the eye of a beached whale.
It lay there for a while and after the initial thrill of its danger had passed children started scrambling on it, as they will. I thought ‘what a shame it will just get chopped up and taken away, what a shame no one with the power to keep it there will have the imagination to do so.’ But what do I know? Because one day all of those great fronds of hair were trimmed off and its split bits were rounded off and a brace put into place, and there it has stayed ever since. And this week I noticed - it’s still alive. I went and looked at its base and saw that when it fell it fell like a hinge, and that a part of the root is still very much still attached, and still underground. The play tree lives.
Swifts!
This photograph is a bit of a joke as of course there are no swifts in it, but my camera roll will fill up with pictures like this now for the rest of the summer as I try to catch them screeching by. The swifts are back! I was alerted first by the street WhatsApp, and stuck my head out of the window and grinned. They nest in the house opposite ours and another further up the street. We are lucky. The sound of my summer has returned.
That’s it from me. Please leave your comments below - what has been particularly ‘this week’ about your week? Tell me about your bluebell walks, your coronation quiches (did *anyone* eat one of those?); your street parties and your fledglings.
A peaceful hot air balloon ride over bright yellow fields and the winding river Ouse in York :)
Ooooh how lucky you are to have swifts nesting opposite! 'our' swifts are back too (I just published an article about them funnily enough) and I was SO excited to see them! Every time I hear a faint scream a huge smile appears on my face. Very much relate to your thousands of photos of the sky... With no swifts! We've had some spectacular skies here this week though, including some stunning rainbows!