As ever, Mother Nature had to have the last word.  No sooner had I posted about the mild January weather than she vented her rage by sending the biggest snowfall for years,  Roads blocked or treacherous, schools closed, birds seeking feeders...somehow I feel it's my fault.

Sheltered, as we are by the Lammermuirs, it isn't too bad for us though others have had a hard time

...and yet there is still a defiant primula supporting me.

 As quoted in October, Larkin's message to diarists was to observe "when the flowers come

  ...and when the birds go".

Duly noting this, I went out to observe and found things are not as they were for him in in the 1960's and 70's. 

 There are no seasons only variations of weather.   The flocks of fieldfares and redwings that feasted on the hawthorns and the infrequent, but recurrent gangs of waxwings on the cotoneasters seem to be a thing of the past.  No sign of them.  Whatever prompted their winter migration doesn't seem to be happening now. The days of seeing four members of the thrush family - fieldfare, redwing, song thrush and black bird all feeding on windfall apples in the garden at the same time are a distant memory.

Flowers.   Yes, we expect winter flowering jasmine on its trellis and in the hedge but winter flowering geraniums and fuchsias?   Strange times.

Medlar jelly - supplemental

 After my October post, I did manage to make a single jar of medlar jelly from the tree I discovered in the medieval Priory garden.   The  fruit bletted unevenly so my haul was even more diminished by the time of  cooking.   It had a vague, difficult-to-pin-down taste.  Pleasant, maybe slightly floral, certainly subtle.  I tried it as an adjunct to cheese, a simple Cheddar as that seemed to chime with the medieval vibe. It was a bit like quince but without the heavy scent.    Next year, I will try for a bigger haul of fruits.

Sailing to Byzantium

Continuing the poetic theme....I have always wanted to visit Istanbul or Constantinople.... remembering the playground riddles of seventy plus years ago

"Constantinople is a very big word. If you can't spell it you're a very big dunce"

Then, I had no idea where Constantinople was and, even if I had, I had no idea of travelling to it.  It was a place like Timbuktu, or Timbuctoo as I would have spelt it.   A story book city with a long name.

Now, the world has shrunk.

Now, I can travel wherever I wish.. almost.   Only Time is against me now so, like Yeats...

 ...therefore I have sailed the seas and come to  the holy city of Byzantium.

We flew but the destination was the same.

Istanbul pulsates with vigour.  Everyone seems to be on the move, like a human ant nest or beehive. The traffic is unbelievable, a constant stream of vehicles filling every street and lane and roadway, all going to...where?

                                                               No country for old men

The monuments of its the magnificent past sit unperturbed amongst the bustle.  

 The Hagia Sophia and Blue Mosque are as serene as when they were built.  Unlike the poet, they are secure in their state and status... 

Monuments of unageing intellect

We sailed across the Bosporus from Europe to Asia and drank Turkish tea.  

We walked round the Hippodrome of Constantine the Great where charioteers had steered their horses round an incredibly tight circuit like Charlton Heston in the movies but for real.  We  marveled at the obelisk of Thutmose III, already three thousand years old when it was brought to embellish Constantine's city and its carvings as fresh as the day some long forgotten Egyptian craftsman with a copper chisel and wooden mallet created them.    A monument not to some Pharaoh but to the man who made it.

Yeats seemed to be searching for a means to achieve an after-life in art.

to be gathered into the artifice of eternity

The humble stone mason achieved it more than three millennia before him.

 

 

Ode to Autumn

 Continuing the poetic theme, a week ago, I turned the corner at the burn and saw...

not a Wordsworthian host of spring daffodils but an autumnal burst of autumn crocuses

Where they seeded from goodness knows but they must have been propagating year by year for decades just to give that splash of colour on a rainy October day.

As Larkin suggested, I'm recording "the day the flowers come....."

and "when the birds go..."

Geese flying in for winter.

A New Start

  

  I stopped writing my blog in 2020 because I thought I didn't have anything to say that might be of interest to anyone else.

Two novels and half a dozen plays later, I've returned to write for myself as an exercise, a mental workout, a whimsy, a sort of on-line reverie.

A programme on Philip Larkin, one of the greats of English poetry had me re-reading some of his work and I came across one I hadn't seen or didn't remember, "Forget what did".

"Stopping the diary

Was a stun to memory"

Whatever Larkin's reasons for stopping were, he seems to say that a diary shouldn't be a personal but the pages...

."Should they ever be filled

Let it be with the observed

Celestial recurrences

The day the flowers come

And when the birds go"

So maybe a blog of observations has some value.

                                                          Chaffinch on Blackthorn

A walk around the field edge fringed with a snowstorm of blossom on the bare blackthorn in spring now has sloes, blue-black with a dusting of bloom, on the branches.  Blackthorn, the witches tree from whence theycarved their wands, the tree of misfortune and magic but also the tree of protection that made a stout prickly hedge and from whose hard wood cudgels or shillelaghs could be fashioned.

Sloes have been found in the stomach contents of  Iron Age peat bog mummies.  They are so astringent that if you eat one you can't un-pucker your mouth for about twenty minutes.  So, did the ancient folk cook them or were they  consumed as part of a ritual?  Possibly they were eaten when they had been "bletted" by frosts. I've seen blackbirds pecking at crab apples after they were frosted when presumably they are less tart.

                                                      Crab Apples waiting for the frosts

Medlars are traditionally bletted before consumption.   I've never eaten a medlar but have discovered a tree in the Priory garden so will have a go when the weather changes.

                                                                       Medlars

The best thing to do with sloes is to make sloe gin.

We have an old recipe book that says -

Take 1lb sloes;1pt gin; 12oz sugar.   Prick the sloes with a hat-pin.  Put in a sealed jar, shaking every few days for three months.  Strain, bottle and drink at race meetings.  

Presumably National Hunt or point-to-point in the winter months.

May sayings

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May.*

No doubt about that as the gales buffet the fruit trees creating a snowstorm of apple blossom. Our hopes for a huge crop of apples to puree and freeze or trade with the cider maker for a share of last year's output is diminishing with every blast. The plums may have suffered the same fate though they were further advanced and the gean tree has shed a load of nascent bird cherries. 

 What will the blackies and fieldfares do come Autumn and what of the wood mouse who lives in the hedge and whose winter stores of cherry stones I find, each opened like a can of beans to get the kernels ?

May is a spectacularly variable month for weather, scorching sunshine then squalls of rain and wind to follow within a day. No sooner have we got the sun-lounger out than we are putting it away before it tumbles in the wind like a huge daddy-long-legs across the grass.

Ne'er cast a cloot 'til (the) may is oot. **

Last week with its scorching days, proved this a truism as the may blossom burst forth in frothy splendour with their their strange musky sweet scent heavy in the hot sun then, capricious as ever the wind blew in from the North and changed the adage to its commoner interpretation - ne'er cast a cloot 'til May is oot. 

The Merry month of May

The merriest month in all the year is the merry month of May***

A time for courting or "winching" as the Scots would have it, a time for the maypole with its significance, a time for May queens, a time when the may and May become fused into one great celebration of love and fertility.

Near us is the village of Polwarth, remembered in verse by Alan Ramsay in his Polwarth on the Green.

    At Polwart on the green

If you’ll meet me on the morn

Where lasses do conveen

To dance around the thorn

There was a tradition of newly-weds out walk around the hawthorn tree presumably a folk memory of an old fertility rite. Fortunately, the tree still survives and a descendant tree has been grown along side its ancient sire.

The Polwarth Thorn

Young love, fertility symbolism, the queens of the May, the green man, dancing round the may pole.

No wonder that May is the merriest month.

Here we come gathering nuts in May

Nuts in May

On a cold and frosty morning

Yes there are some cold and frosty mornings in May but nuts? There aren't ever nuts in May. It would seem it's really "knots" in May. Knots or bouquets of may flowers collected as part of a children's game pairing boys and girls, an echo of an older custom of choosing a spouse and so we come round again to May being the merriest of the months!

Knots of may

Fertility rites, Beltane (La Beulltain) fires, leaping over the flames, feasting with special bannocks and possets, washing your face in the dew......
...and now we make do with a bank holiday!

*     W.S.
**   Anon
*** Ballad