These two were in the leaf litter under the sage bush clinging onto that big leaf. No blackbird or thrush around to gobble them up and no crops for them to devour. A few sage leaves went into the evening risotto, and rosemary, but no parsley or thyme!
As I left the garden I noticed the fresh green nettles; March is the time to harvest them and I had rubber gloves in my pocket! I did have a couple of those sycamore seedlings to deal with, but plenty of fresh nettles where the tree fell over a year ago churning up long-buried seed.
The soup awaits attention tomorrow lunchtime. Full of vitamins but the stings have boiled away.
We have a neighbour who feeds the pigeons (and indirectly the sparrowhawk). This morning the pigeons were not ranging the snow-covered fields, but gathered in the lime tree, keeping company, conserving energy, and waiting for the grain to be scattered in our neighbour’s garden.
The wild cherries are small and bitter and ripe ones are few and far between. I photographed these on my way to forage for lime flowers. I also saw again exactly why I don’t bother with foraging for cherries: the birds get them first before the fruit gain any sweetness to human tastebuds. Why they missed this bunch I don’t know. The next picture shows the result on cherries of comprehensive pecking; the stones remain on the stalks, and the stalks on the tree.
A wood pigeon sneered at me as I stopped to survey the scene and take my pictures. Possibly one of those birds that awaken me in the early hours in summer time.
I get my cherries from the cherry lady’s stall in the High Street. She’s back after covid!
My friend Thomas sent an email to say, ‘We are not failures’ if our New Year Resolutions have not borne the fruit we’d hoped for. So be good to yourself: ‘if only for a moment, let yourself be at home with yourself’.’
One place I am at home with myself is the kitchen. The school Thomas and I attended expected us to master basic cooking, but many of the lads can do better than basic. My January therapeutic special activity is making marmalade. Not much foraging to this one but come Autumn we can make October marmalade using citrus peel, sugar and windfall or crab apples, which supply the pectin that helps the preserve to set.
January the set depends on long boiling and added pectin, using most of the stored jars from under the stairs. That’s our label up above. Friends and relations look out!
The two old guys were sitting in the sun. Where the rays had not come through the grass was still frosted, there was paper thin ice on the waterbutts.
A minute later, enter the squirrel, with a whole digestive biscuit in his mouth. He’s got at least one human well trained.
But he did.
Image from wikipedia, Eastern gray squirrel.
There's nothing like the sun as the year dies, Kind as it can be, this world being made so, To stones and men and beasts and birds and flies, To all things that it touches except snow, Whether on mountain side or street of town. The south wall warms me: November has begun, Yet never shone the sun as fair as now While the sweet last-left damsons from the bough With spangles of the morning's storm drop down Because the starling shakes it, whistling what Once swallows sang. But I have not forgot That there is nothing, too, like March's sun, Like April's, or July's, or June's, or May's, Or January's, or February's, great days: And August, September, October, and December Have equal days, all different from November. No day of any month but I have said — Or, if I could live long enough, should say — "There's nothing like the sun that shines to-day." There's nothing like the sun till we are dead.
Edward Thomas.
Edward Thomas challenged his melancholy by getting out of doors, with friends such as Robert Frost but often enough alone. November sun in England, especially against a south wall, or south cliff, is noticeably warming.
Mid-November last year we went walking and foraged damsons, sweeter than they would have been a month earlier, but recorded that in prose, not poetry.
‘There’s nothing like the sun till we are dead’, and then? Why then we shall learn who the sun is like.
And there shall be no night there;
and they need no candle, neither light of the sun;
for the Lord God giveth them light:
and they shall reign for ever and ever.
Revelation 22:5.
There they were, not beech nuts but nuts on the beach. The beach is on Morecambe Bay, at the foot of a low limestone cliff; the nuts were hazels. We had seen the grey squirrels picking clusters of two or three nuts, taking one to eat on the spot while letting the rest fall to the ground, where the fearless forager could harvest them. I never expected to harvest nuts on the beach!
But what are you going to do with them? asks Mrs Turnstone. Christmas is coming …
It was already warm at 10.00, so we took our walk early. I had a foraging bag in my pocket and spent a few minutes in the scented shade of a lime, or linden, tree, gathering the blossom to dry for tea – a soporific I’m told – and working alongside the bees, hive and humble.
I’m always reminded of a primary school teacher who insisted, heavy-handedly, that there were no green flowers, but see above; and that grass was always green. See above and below. Use your eyes!
Use your eyes? It was our ears alerted us to the peacock, but he is surprisingly well camouflaged in the dappled shade below. His markings effectively break up the outline of his body; he looks like part of the tree and part of the shadow.
Final picture, another bird whose camouflage is effective. This wood pigeon is sitting in next door’s birch tree; the passageway between the two human houses channels and increases whatever wind there may be. Pigeon is probably enjoying a gentle breeze.
The first ripe blackberry today, only a few days later than usual.
Usually I am cycling when I pass this tree, so despite going by for decades, I never till now looked, nor noticed the nuts forming, probably a week behind in size.
We’ll probably refrain from foraging here, as this tree grows near the top of the city wall. Nuts are accessible from the wall path, where there is exposure to traffic fumes day and night. Those protected by the wall from pollution will be beyond our reach!
But we know where to look!
Will Turnstone 