There is a buzz in Canterbury these days, at least wherever there are lime trees. Even mere humans can pick up the honeyed scent of the flowers, but the bees are loving it.
I harvested plenty from around Saint Mildred’s church for my lime flower tea, now drying on the spare bedroom floor. The trees around the church are far enough from the main road to have escaped the worst of the pollution. The drink is refreshing ice cold. There’s still time to harvest yours!
Looking across the Thames from Greenwich, the towers of London’s financial district impose and impress – until you look at that sky!
What does the word ‘mermaid’ suggest to you? Andersen and Disney sweet young girl, giving herself to the man she loves? Or else the seal-women of Scotland, or the sirens of Greek legend, luring unloved men to their deaths?
The Mermaid rose is s beautiful as any of those, but has more in common with the sirens. Get too close to her and you won’t escape easily from her sharp, backward-facing thorns. But she’s lovely enough, if handled with leather gloves. She’ll grow 4m plus high and those buds will open to creamy yellow single flowers. The deep red berberis leaves set her off well.
Mrs Turnstone came in from her night shift and went to bed, but a few minutes later I heard the floorboards creak in the back bedroom. As ever of late, the wood pigeons and collared doves were filling the air, keeping her awake. I was reminded of Robert Frost’s Minor Bird:
I have wished a bird would fly away,
And not sing by my house all day;Have clapped my hands at him from the door
When it seemed as if I could bear no more.The fault must partly have been in me.
The bird was not to blame for his key.And of course there must be something wrong
In wanting to silence any song.
Sweet Dreams, Mrs T!
I was looking for something else when I came across some of the extracts I made from Richard Jefferies’ “The Gamekeeper at Home”, first published in 1878. Ian, a lad I once taught, had an ambition to become a keeper, and enjoyed reading this book together, despite the sometimes old-fashioned language. He had the capacity to stand and stare that Jefferies describes here. The book is available at Project Gutenberg.
Often and often, when standing in a meadow gateway partly hidden by the bushes, watching the woodpecker on the ant-hills, of whose eggs, too, the partridges are so fond (so that a good ant year, in which their nests are prolific, is also a good partridge year) you may, if you are still, hear a slight faint rustle in the hedge, and by-and-by a weasel will steal out. Seeing you he instantly pauses, elevates his head, and steadily gazes: move but your eyes and he is back in the hedge; remain quiet, still looking straight before you as if you saw nothing, and he will presently recover confidence, and actually cross the gateway almost under you.
This is the secret of observation: stillness, silence, and apparent indifference.
Will Turnstone 