Harvest to be anticipated.

smart

I expect some of the Fordwich allotment gardeners put their own produce on the table over Christmas and New Year, but there was no-one around when we peered through the hazel hedge on 8 January – except for the dancing scarecrow at the back. And there’s a good patch of brassicas to the left, I’m not sure whether it’s kale or cauliflower. Note the leaf broken over the head of the plant; gardeners do this to keep the florets white and deter pigeons.

I hope my chard recovers from the December frosts! Nothing to see there for the pigeons right now.

Cherry ripe?

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!

Preparing for Spring

Walking through Saint Stephen’s park today I saw the first black-headed gull in Spring plumage, ready for Valentine’s, the birds’ wedding day. It was less obliging in posing for the camera than this one, but almost as smart.

Smart, too, was the white wood pigeon that both Mrs Turnstone and I saw at different times in different parks (so perhaps there are two of them about). The one I saw was not albino but had a dark bar across its tail in flight. Mrs T’s had flecks of colour on its breast. Over the last maybe ten years, there has often been a white wood pigeon around Canterbury.