Spring Flowers

At last! Some colour in the garden. The daffs are still not fully out - most still tightly in bud. Everyone agrees the season is a couple of weeks later than it's been for a few years. But it is coming - even though there was frost on the ground this morning, it is definitely Spring. The light levels are fantastic, and the days are already stretching way out past eight o'clock in the evening.

And some brave garden flowers are in full bloom. In my garden, that means the primulas and the flowering currant.



Oo! Seeing those photographs has me feeling all poetic. I must look out a poem or two on the wonders of Spring. Stay tuned for the next post...

Spring has Sprung!

At last, and a couple of weeks later than last year, I think we can say that Spring has arrived here on the hill. The daffodils are still well short of their peak - most are still in tight bud, but they are going to look gorgeous in a week or two.

The first of the wild flowers have emerged - only just, and I had to look hard to find them, but definite evidence that nature hasn't forgotten how to do it. To celebrate, I have loads of photos to share:


The first plant in flower was some coltsfoot in the ditch outside the house - just one clump, but a wonderful, defiant sunshine yellow.
Next was one of the classic Spring woodland flowers, Anemone nemorosa - again just one clump, but I know that in a few days the ground will be carpeted with them.

The trees here (and the fenceposts and anything that stands still long enough) are covered with lichen. I'm no expert but there are at least three varieties , probably many more. I liked this small branch on a flowering cherry, with a leaf bud just beginning to unwrap, barely noticeable in the forest of lichen.





And here's another branch - on an apple tree this time. I love the contrast between the close-hugging orange lichen and the seaweed-like branching grey one.

March on a Highland Croft

Time for the March instalment from Wendy Wood's book about life in the Highlands of Scotland in the 1950s.

"Drip, drip - the rain tub is full and running over, wellingtons and sou'westers are the garb all day long, and the stream is suddenly visible right up the hillside among the bare trees, a series of waterfalls too impetuous to keep to the usual course, somthing that has suddenly leapt from the paralysis of a frosty trickle to a sense of power and joy. It makes a multitude of sounds as it splashes and surges, tucking dead leaves under its shining apron. All night I hear it thundering as if a line of vehicles were pounding ceaselessly along the road.

The croft seems alive with little things. The wren pops in and out of her winter nest beside the stream and I am anxious in case she is swamped out of her home. The robin that roosts in the woodshed gives a sleepy chirp at night when I go with the lantern for logs, and I see him fluffed up with his chin amongst his breast feathers on the handle of the hoe. A vole is living there too among some rubbish in a box. I am well aware of a tiny worn path from her house into mine, and no offering of cheese in her own parlour will stop her pilfering meals in my pantry."

Although the talk everywhere today is of climate change, Wendy's account of Spring is not much different from what I see around me here on the hill. In fact, in some respects, her Springs seem to have come earlier than mine. Her winters might have been colder and deeper, but she talks about lambs in March and of being woken by the cuckoo calling, but the lambs come later than March here, and I haven't heard a cuckoo yet. There is snow on the ground as I write, and more forecast next week - it certainly doesn't feel as if this part of the world is warming up much.

And Picture of the Day is this one of a wren posing like a professional for the camera in my garden.

Spring!

Well, I don't know where my brain has been, but it wasn't until I switched on my computer this morning that I realised that the Spring Equinox occurs today - in fact it occurred at 5.48 a.m. Oh frabjious day! From now on, the days are longer than the nights and, for those of us up here in the far, far north the days lengthen quicker and longer (sounds a bit like one of those rude emails that keep being sent to me.)

I don't know if you knew - I didn't until a couple of years ago - that at the Equinoxes, the length of day and night are equal - more than that, they are equal all over the world. It is quite a thought - unifying somehow. And even better to know that, soon, there is going to be so much daylight here that I am going to be heartily sick of it and wishing for the cosy, dark nights of winter again.

Here's a suitably celebratory picture for you all and HAPPY SPRING!!

An Altogether Nicer Spring Image

And to make up for the hideous wrinkled thing in the previous post, I offer you this...

...a kestrel taking a break on the power line outside my window. I am rather chuffed with this pic, as it was taken from inside through the window. Now, if I could get one of it hovering in the air...

Spring tensing

It's a mild day here on the hill, the days are getting lighter and, best of all, the birds have started singing again. The great tits have been throwing out their see-saw call all day and darting through the bushes. And when I took the dog for her walk, we saw two pairs of buzzards wheeling overhead and calling - wonderful!