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May Blossom

Well, May has arrived – and with it the Hawthorn hedges are starting to show signs of May Blossom. Traditionally this is the recommended time to bring the cattle out of their nice, warm winter barn, as the grass that has snoozed gently all winter should now be awake and perked up, raring to be eaten.
The Hawthorn has a large humanitarian streak in its nature and has given its Good Samaritan support to the various, misunderstood and outcast, carrion insects. The overt result of this is that the scent exuded by the flowers is reminiscent of rotting meat – totally at odds with the apparent purity of its white blossom.
In some years, our hedges go from zero to hero, seemingly overnight. A uniform green one day – then covered with white blossom the next. This year they have shown no such enthusiasm. Over the last couple of weeks the flowers have appeared in a rather haphazard manner, showing a small spray of white here, then ditto there.
I suspect that Hawthorn has reason to believe that the news source it uses to co-ordinate its flowering has become unreliable, and it just can’t be sure of the facts anymore.

Chaffinch Sitting In The Sun

I Should Be Singing

Photography is such a fiddly business. There are about a million things you can adjust or select, add or subtract – and even worse, in order to do all of this you first have to find your glasses. (Didn’t Confucius say something similar?)

So, when buying a camera, I wanted something that could handle all of this phaffing on its own – without me having to fill in a four page questionnaire before the picture could be taken. To be fair, I was quite prepared to do my share. I was happy enough to take full responsibility for pointing the camera in roughly the right direction, and pressing the button at a time convenient to us both.

Birds, in particular, I have a love hate relationship with. I have endless pictures of the branch that the bird just flew away from – all in perfect focus. Some time ago, around this time of the year, I as passed this hedge, there, sitting on top, in full view, so wrapped up in his sunbathing that he completely ignored the great lumbering humans a few feet away, was a small bird. He was enjoying himself so much that he couldn’t be bothered to fly off when I took his picture. I was immensely impressed by his focus on the task in hand so I wrote him a song.

The Chaffinch we have in today’s piccy is a completely different bird – but he too, is focusing on the important things in life – I think he deserves a chorus or two, too.

Cowslip

We don’t see Cowslips around much. I think they’ve been poorly. Apparently, in the 1970s, things just got a little too much for the poor dears and they were on the verge of packing it all in and retiring to a nice boarding house in a not too popular, but select, seaside town. This plan came to nought however, as the department of roads started to put cowslip seeds in the ‘wild flower mix’ that they spread around to provide a vegetative covering along the raw banks of new and improved roads and motorways. This new career opening revived the cowslip’s flagging fortunes and they were soon on the road to recovery.

One of the main problems, if you’re an early (spring) riser, is that there hasn’t been anything to eat around all winter, so unless you’re very poisonous – and I mean very, very poisonous – people and various other animals will eat you. This is really inconvenient if all you want to do wave a few flowers at an occasional bee, produce a seed, and then get back to sleep. Hopefully, we’re now old enough to know better.
Cowslips are sometimes called St. Peter’s Keys. With a little imagination, they do look a bit like a bunch of keys, don’t they? I mention this because the explanations offered for the etymology of the name “cowslip” is bland beyond belief.

Peacock butterfly in Cherry Blossom

I couldn’t remember if I’d showed you any Cherry Blossom or not this year. I wouldn’t like you to think that we were totally ignoring our cherry trees. We spend considerable time each year admiring their blossom and, in any other way we can think of, building trust and community spirit. As autumn approaches we will hope to recoup our investment with a nice crop of Wild Cherries. These, coupled with a good serving of brandy and a spoonful of sugar – to help the medicine go down – will be the basis of uniquely purposed and high quality content by Christmas. Wild Cherries really do make the very best Cherry Brandy.
We were pottering along, down by the beck, the other day and an early butterfly fluttered past. It settled on a dandelion and I shook the camera awake and crept forward. You know perfectly well, that as soon as I came within reasonable distance, our butterfly fluttered off. As the camera was now fully awake we tiptoed after it, hoping it would land somewhere convenient – soon.
Well, a couple of flaps and it disappeared down the beck. We relaxed and started to put the camera cover back on, then our butterfly came back as suddenly as it had gone – and landed in amongst the cherry blossom.
We’ve had some snow and cold biting winds recently – I hope he brought his big coat.

Dandelions

There is pressure and stress in every walk of life. This is especially true if you are of an entrepreneurial turn of mind. The urge to respond to the need to be first to market is an almost unbearable driver – unfortunately it doesn’t always result in products that are a good fit for the niche our developer envisaged. This leads to products or services that can’t be sold until the promotion has created a market for them.

If you’re going to invent a better mouse trap – you are going to need five star reviews from a goodly number of mice before you can build the buzz you have to have for your promotional campaign.

The risks are high. Say you don’t get the testimonials, your whole campaign flops, and sales fail to materialise? Your Angels start to turn red, grow horns and a tail. Your own investment in time and labour, the sweat of your brow, late nights and strong coffee. All, soul destroyingly, for nothing.

Wouldn’t it be better then, to wait until there are, at least some, bees around before coming into flower?

New Lambs In Our Fields

Well 2017 has really decided to get things rolling. To ‘Hit’ em up, and move ’em out’ – to quote the cowboy movies of my youth. I don’t know if cowboys still have to comply with these instructions in today’s enlightened age. It is quite possible that Bovine Care and Guidance Operatives have been down-sized, computerised, and replaced by robots by now.
But, back to 2017. The very dark green carpet with the small purple design that is Self Heal has spread out along the roadsides. The Soldiers and Sailors are blowing their blue and red trumpets under the hedges. The green in the village green is sprinkled with the pale pink of Cuckoo Flowers and the Greater Stitchwort’s daisy white flowers are popping up in the patch near the gate into the field. Even the Bluebells are showing flower spikes in all those bunches of dark green leaves that have sat around for weeks – and which we always hopped would turn into Bluebells.
There is just so much happening in our world at this moment – but I suppose you want a picture of a lamb.

Blackthorn Blossom

There are certain issues that crop up year in and year out. At this time of year they come with increased frequency. Take trees, for example. About now, trees start to blossom – and very pretty they are too – but if you are interested in the name of the tree whose blossom you are admiring – enough to want to take a photo of it, then you would welcome a few clues to guide you.

The easiest way to identify a tree is by the size and shape of its leaves. Trees that flower before their leaves appear, are just being deliberately obstructive – especially if they only produce white flowers. Still, there are precedents that you can rely on. Usually the first of our native trees to produce its white flowers is the wild plum (or Cherry Plum) next should be the Blackthorn, then the Wild Cherry and lastly the Hawthorn.

During the time that we have spent prowling the byways of out locality we have yet to find any of the wild plums – they just don’t appear to care for the area. This means that our first white flowers should be Blackthorn.

For several of the past autumns we have collected wild cherries (to cover with brandy), and so we know where the wild cherry trees are. So, the fact that they have chosen to come into flower at the same time as several other trees (which we know are not wild cherry) must be regarded as a deliberate attempt to muddy the waters.

Google is inclined to agree with us that our picture is of Blackthorn – if we can remember which tree we photographed by the autumn – we will certainly be back to look for sloes. I’m not that fond of gin, but in the name of Science, you know. . .