This winter our walk in and out of town has often featured, at ground level, a young heron, who seemed to be making a living in the shallows of the River Stour. A few yards upstream the water is much deeper, due to the sluices from the former mill site. This provides deep water and a living for a couple of cormorants who dry themselves on the roof of the sheltered housing block, or else the trees across the road from there.
The hazel we planted a few years ago on a scrap of waste land was not in flower on New Year’s Day, but yesterday it had shaken out the first lambs’ tails. Can Spring be far behind?
A peaceful and prosperous New Year to each and every reader! God bless,
Will.
Mrs Turnstone and I were in Southwell, Nottinghamshire, where we went to see the Mediaeval carved leaves in the Cathedral. The garden of the ruined Palace of the Archbishops of York has been planted to accompany the stone leaves, but this post is about a tree that does not appear inside: the Larch. It appears here as a flame, as its needles turn from green to gold.
The needles close-up. It won’t be long before they fall to the ground; this is the only deciduous conifer in Europe. It is equally beautiful when the new needles appear in spring.
I stopped at the corner of Watling Street and the Whitefriars shopping centre to adjust my shopping, and looked up. There was Dorothy, more properly Rosa Dorothy Perkins, climbing up to the sun through a foxglove tree, Paulownia Tomentosa.
Summer is here!
Watling Street runs from Dover to Holyhead in North Wales under different names in places, but it’s an old Roman Road. There was a Carmelite monastery where Whitefriars now stands. St John Stone was a friar here.
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.
My friend Frog shared these wintry photos, I found them so calming that I’m passing them on to any reader feeling festivally frazzled!
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.
We had gone up North, despite the railway strikes, for an important family funeral. But thanks to the railway strikes, we travelled early and had time for a few reflective walks. The restored Huddersfield Narrow Canal is easy, dry-shod walking; we found warm accommodation in Greenfield village. On a day of showers and sunshine we turned a corner to witness this autumn scene: a watery sun shining through the golden leaves of the beech, the hedge behind it still hardly changed. Can spring be far behind?
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!
These lines are part of a song in the Compleat Angler of Izaac Walton, written by John Chalkhill, his relative by marriage. Chalkhill was a friend of the poet Edmund Spenser.
Snow on the ground in the photograph, but one day in Spring I chose this piece for a Summer’s day, trusting that there might be ‘excessive heat’ coming the reader’s way. I was editing it soon after cutting down osiers; the previous year’s growth of coppiced willow, as seen above. Often they are grown within a slow-moving river. Then again, I find myself walking under willows almost every day beside the River Stour. I often had occasion to shelter under willows during my time as a very incompleat angler in Ireland. I did catch a very respectable pike once and good eating it was too!
If the sun's excessive heat Make our bodies swelter, To an osier hedge we get For a friendly shelter! Where in a dike, Perch or pike, Roach or dace, We do chase, Bleak or gudgeon, Without grudging, We are still contented. Or we sometimes pass an hour Under a green willow, That defends us from a shower, Making earth our pillow Where we may Think and pray, Before death Stops our breath: Other joys Are but toys, And to be lamented.
Will Turnstone 