Birds Were Singing in the Dawn

Cold Winter Blues

I woke up this morning,
cold winter blues all round my head.
Woke up this morning,
cold winter blues all round my head.
If you don’t leave me woman,
I’ll make you wish that you were dead.

I woke up this morning
snow was lying all around.
Woke up this morning,
snow was lying all around.
Until the ice is melted
there ain’t no road back to town.

I woke up this morning,
birds were singing in the dawn.
Woke up this morning,
birds were singing in the dawn.
If you ain’t careful, woman,
you’re going to wake and find me gone.

Two Winter Haikus

fifteen long-tailed tits
trapezing on the birch stems
catching December sun

dark wings against the snow
two buzzards circle, harvesting
the dead of winter

The Week of the Maple Leaves

At the bottom of the road is a japanese maple outside a cottage (Maple Cottage, would you believe?). It is the last tree to change colour, and almost always the last tree to lose its leaves. But there's a very blustery westerly gale outside, and the leaves are coming off in bucketloads. This weekend I'll be gathering them to make leafmould for next winter, but for now I'm just marvelling at the difference in my perspective. The garden seems smaller now, and much more exposed - not just to the wind and rain, but to my neighbours and the people using the village hall behind our house. It doesn't bother me, as my neighbours are nice people, but it's very different.

The birds seem to feel differently about it too. The great spotted woodpecker which I first saw in the garden a fortnight ago, is much more conspicuous, and as there aren't so many places to shelter while you're eyeing up what's in the feeders, the sparrowhawk has begun to hang about in a meaningful manner. Fortunately our privet hedge is very thick and will keep its leaves over the winter, so the coal tits and sparrows are reasonably safe.

The blustery weather has brought in winter migrants. There was a fieldfare on the birch tree this morning and a flock of waxwings in the trees by the railway station yesterday, noisily finishing off all the cotoneaster berries. I hope they will find enough to keep them going. As far as I can see, only the hawthorn has anything like its usual crop. I can see myself putting out a lot of supplementary food over the winter.

In the human community, my family celebrated the christening of our youngest member, my great-neice Niamh, a very happy occasion which meant that there were more of us in one place than there has been for years. And now I am home, I am going through the submissions for the second issue of Stravaig. They look very promising so far! Submissions have closed and we hope to publish on-line in the new year, so watch this space.

Another space to watch. Art Angel Dundee are holding a fund-raising event this weekend. This is a brilliant project, producing some high class art as well as excellent results for their service users, so please, if you are in the area, pop in and see what's going on.

The Territory in August

We went away in summer, and it feels almost as if we have come back to autumn. It is mostly the illusion caused by the week's gap, but not all. The rowans are red, the elderflower is over (it seemed to go on and on this year, and in England it is flowering yet), and all the birds have fledged, even the big black-backed gull chicks who were trampolining about on their warehouse roof, while the older birds all trash-talked them into finally making the jump. The swifts have gone, and I've seen the first geese and heard curlews heading coastwards.

Ther vegetable patch is coming good. We've started eating courgettes, and the first beans will be later this week. There are tomatoes ripening - not many, pollination has been poor, and now the bean plants aren't so tall the pigeons can't find the cabbages so easily.And my companion planting of borage and marigold looks fabulous, even if it doesn't seem to achieve much!

This photo was meant to be a spider's web, coloured rusty with the spores of the fern it stretches over, but I'm not sure whether you can make it out.I've sown some of it, according to the instructions on Sunday's Gardener's Question Time, just for curiosity. Fernseed is curious stuff. Apart from the fact it isn't actually seed at all, it was popularly supposed to be magical - if you mixed it with oil it could make a potion enabling you to see fairies. I think I'll settle for some more fernlets to plant in the shady places!

Walking the Territory in June

June had its moments - between showers.

This is British hogweed, not the giant Japanese stuff. It looks quite airy and delicate, and has nice seedheads in the autumn.

There are whole stands of this stuff growing along the riverbank -

It's comfrey, a plant which is not only brilliant for gardeners, providing a potash-rich mulch for tomatoes, but had many medicinal uses in the past. A wiccan herbalist friend of mine reckoned that it was a survival from the days of the Abbey, which might be the case. Augustinian Canons elsewhere had a very good reputation as healers, growing herb gardens and building hospitals within the monastery complex.

This year the wild roses are spectacular. I don't remeber ever seeing them so prolific.

Most of the nestlings are fledged now, though I notice that the sparrows appear to be trying for brood number two. The exceptions are the black-backed gulls, whose fat fluffy brown chicks are walking all over the roof of the warehouse their colony has nested on. I'm not looking forward to them taking off. The adults are big, noisy and aggressive and the colony has doubled since last year. I know magpies have a bad rep for killing things, but they are nothing compared with gulls. On Orkney I saw a black-headed gull stoop and lift a plover chick out of a nest without the slightest effort or hesitation. All the meditation on the circle of life and gulls have chicks to feed too doesn't always cut it when you see the bereaved birds circling ad screaming and trying to chase the predator away!

This is fairly irrational I know. I was delighted to find an owl pellet on the parapet of our bridge, but the owls could have eaten all sorts of creatures I'm fond of. And as for the seal I saw going down the river with the tide - that was pure joy, although it could have destroyed untold fish stocks as it came upstream. But there it is. I find some of my wild neighbours easier to live with than others!

The Week of the Baby Birds

Last week's starlings have found their wings, and now they are all over the garden like joy-riders, scaring the wits out of the magpies, who are behaving more like grumpy old men than the ruthless predators they are reputed to be. Their own babies, however, hatched last week and they'll go after anything. I saw one trying to crawl into a roofspace after a sparrow's nest.

Bluetits, blackbirds, sparrows and dunnocks seem to have hatched too. There are fluffy exuberant birds everywhere, trying to eat anything that will sit still long enough, knocking each other over, squawking and jeering at each other from the telephone line or the hedge. It's like being on playground duty again.

Here is my Vincent border. For about a fortnight it looks fabulous.

This is sweet rocket. When I first planted it, it was this lovely violet colour. The next year, it came up white, which looks and smells fantastic in the evenings. And for the last two years, we have had one recurrence of the violet.

Grey June
Grey June twilight now.
Rocket scents the still garden -
cinnamon and dew.

Now it is raining, and cooler again. The garden came on a lot in the sunny weather, but the courgettes and pumpkins I planted and the french beans I sowed will be glad of the wet weather - if it doesn't go on too long.

Summer Rain
When the long drought ends,
rain kisses dusty windows,
whispers on the roof.

All the aquilegias came out - they are a weird and wonderful mix. Every year I think I will save seed of the prettiest, but they just do what they like anyway.