these tiny, glorious moments
being forever busy and moments remembered in the in between...
Welcome dear ones, how is spring being beautiful for you? Up here on my hill it is the time of year when I have permanent attachments of the mechanical kind, spend every free second attempting to maintain order in three gardens when order is most certainly not on the menu. I try my best not to miss the gorgeousness in-between.
In the woodland I clear the paths, plant trees; an Elder—strangely there isn’t one already—a Beech which has been an unwilling bonsai for the last five years—I don’t blame it—and two tiny Viburnum saplings found while being curious about blossom I didn’t recognise—in twenty years of living on this hill I have never come to know the three viburnum trees the size of medium oaks. This year they flower—gloriously—for the first time. I have asked to be friends and await a reply. I cut ivy as big as tree trunks—space! light!—I plant Yellow archangel/dead nettle (Lamium galeobdolon) to encourage butterflies and bees, periwinkle (vinca major/minor) also. Fallen branches are cleared, a last bonfire is burnt. It is pleasing work. When I finish it is just in time, the woodland floor is in full bloom; Herb Robert is predominant—last year white nettle took centre stage—wild asparagus1 a close second.
Six years of loving hands is beginning to show.
And, I tackle the overgrowth, hour after painful hour in unseasonably hot sunshine. No I am not complaining, ever, about sunshine, even when those hours are spent hacking back brambles which seem to grow faster than I can clear them the warmth is welcomed. Also the entire sheep field has to be topped with a brush-cutter because four woolly friends can barely see through huge growth. They refuse to eat any of it, instead, systematically ringbark the plum trees around the edge which isn’t the idea of having them at all. Grrrrr…. a loving grrrr of course!
But I am on spring holidays, have spring fever, and/or a spring in my tail—like Tigger—whichever… I thank the gods I do because I am busier than noticeably absent bees.
Hence, short notes, again…
April by the river; I forget which day, much like I forget the hour, I know only that I have few minutes shimmering ahead of me to follow the peace of wild things, to allow the current of seasonal flux and flow, the feeling when it raises the hair on my arms, the laughter of relief when realisation demands it. It is the time for both, everything is hungry!
The river is low, the leaf bokeh beguiling. I’m standing over a congregating pool, where, on the surface there are hundreds of tiny green caterpillars, called Oak Leafrollers. If I look below, deep into the water, between flickering light and dark there are, also, hundreds of troutling. None are more than a few centimetres long and all are frantically feeding on this nutritious delicacy, then just as frantically, suddenly swimming for life. I turn, face to the sky, see above me the darkening shadow of heron wings almost the width of the river itself, ghostlike in grey, he changes the shape of the sky. He swoops for his supper, sees my human face, then, likely more than a little angry, barks something I understand to be a heron equivalent of swearing, turns and disappears over the oak trees. The sudden shadow, the immediacy of inky, empty water is an eerie sight—fine hair raises—I am an aging, tired fool spooked by sky change for no reason but for the troutling the stakes are high, they had reason to dart for safety. I try not to think about the many that will perish when great wings return because they will; Herons have a mighty memory!
I am grateful for these few sacred seconds in the presence of water dwellers, soon the river will be dry, all life will be departed, but for the now, these are moments filled with the absolute normal—beautiful—art of survival and in a world where so much isn’t, it feels holy.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free. — Wendell Berry
Sometimes you have to touch a being to know they are real. Sometimes you can remember the colour of the sky at the very moment a wish becomes a physical warmth under your fingertips. When my daughter arrives home, the sky is blue like the feathers of a Jay, her smile as warm as the colour of honey. She fills my kitchen with a beam of light, is as happy to be home on this wild hill as I am to have her here. The invisible threads of love we share over months and weeks of our separate lives become tangible, our joy is visibly effervescent.
Until she tangles with caterpillar silk, then one by one the bubbles burst!
Rosie hates caterpillars… and the tiny green Oak Leafrollers, not content to confine their short lives to river life are hanging by the thousand along the lane and in all the woodland. Silk threads caught in a spring breeze float across every path. Nowhere is safe and, though they may be a delicacy for troutlings, they are a horror story of Hitchcock proportion for my daughter. I am relieved for her the nightmare lasts but a few days.
Briefly — where I have many brief encounters with unexpected cherubs of feather and fur.
Owl — a telltale clicking, a tiny beak-warning, a shuffle of fluff over dusty floorboards at the end of the barn. I find only one owlet, though likely there is another. I try to approach but it seems I have been warned!
Bats — we do not mean to disturb a family of pipistrelle bats as we move roof tiles from a collapsed crate outside la cave to something equally dilapidated inside. Three momma’s flit furiously about the vaulted roof as light streams in. Our human ears do not hear the pitch of their voices, we are badly equipped for such sound but I know they are screaming obscenities at us.
male pigeon taking the morning shift! Wood Pigeon — while moving old doors stacked over one of two windows, again at the back of the barn—careful not to step on hidden clicking fluff unaware of human need for light—I notice a pigeon-grey smudge in the branches of a noble fir just a few metres from the window. I balance on rickety floorboards, peer through spring-green pine needles, too bright sunshine and grey smudge becomes male pigeon sitting on a nest close enough to capture with limited camera equipment. I feel lucky, I feel like a birder! To be continued…
Hare — there are just three; two below in shady woodland preferring dappled beech-light, one above who watches me from between wild floral arrangements in open meadows. They are a fearfully small number compared to just nine months ago and I cannot tell if any are female. This I write with a sad and heavy heart, hands clasped in prayer.
I have been to your home three times in past weeks under the pretext of verifying no skulduggery has been attempted. I find none but nevertheless create an appearance of daily use. Also, always and forevermore, in spring, I go to gather a few sprays of the yellow petalled rose you so loved—how great its suffering without you… I love it as you did, bend my fingers and hands gently to its needs, as you did. I try—you know I always will—to persuade it to life, to thrive and flourish. I hope that my language is not so different from yours, my touch as magic.
I never noticed that palest of yellow, Banksia rose tucked away in your garden, even when I know how well you loved roses. How did I imagine you wouldn’t have this particular beauty hidden amongst the myriad others? I gather a few sprays for the table tonight, I have guests, you know them, so do listen in, you will undoubtedly be spoken of at length and with fondness. You are missed, loved greatly - by your garden also. — 8th April 2024
It feels very much like every living, breathing being waits for me to climb—exhausted—into bed before singing as loudly as they can. Then, again, at dawn, a chorus…
And, as if I or anyone else never lost a dear friend, a mother, a father, a child and all those gone too young that will be loved for all of time, the sun sets in the west to the song of the nightingale… and this is life it says, normal, transient, transcendent life.
With my head filled with sweet nightingale song and always with forever love
At this time of year in France, many people seek out this plant to use in salads or omelettes, the name given is ‘rrespounchou’ or ‘asperges sauvage’ it is the wild plant more commonly known to British people as Black Bryony, Tamier commun (Dioscorea communis).
All components of the black bryony plant, including the tubers, are poisonous due to saponin content. An exception is only reported for young shoots, which are harvested when saponin content is still low and consumed as vegetable.
Susie, wonderful, these wonders never cease!
Heart felt holiday and laughter travel far, like the familiar names, periwinkle is abundant in our 'front garden' where we did not quell it these recent years, dandelions are just coming into clock time, apple magic follows the brevity of the old pear, and the cherry we were given long back and forgot, made a week's amazing flourish out of the hedge. Sweet Cicely waits for rhubarb, and the rest of our sequence though spread thinner in this north, is poised to follow after you. The river already provides sustenance early enough for the first of the martens. come home to their burrows where the meandering strong stream has cleft the meadow to leave a short cliff of sand. They have had their flood disasters in past years but seem recovered, full joie de vivre at wing speed.
Heron we see, but I have yet to hear his bark this year. He watched me from the top of an Alder tree bright in an evening sun. The green is spreading along the old trees, not yet the ash and oak, but beech-green lights up it seems suddenly in a day.
Tonight miles inland the North Sea spooked the sky with sudden cold and darkness. They still call this Haar after some ancient presence, the long grey hair curling through town and city chooses its own time of day. But likely tomorrow a change of wind and the sun restores a busy holiday, with diverse wasps and bees, new butterflies, and the small birds who sing for our company.
PS. This year the tree sparrow pair are in serious courtship at our window where we leave them a safe home behind the frame.
I loved immersing in your world for these moments. The gift of attention goes both ways. 💛