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.

The Cherry and the Sloe

**
About ane bank, quhair birdis on bewis
 Ten thusand tymis thair notis renewis
Ilke houre into the day: 
The Merle, & Maveis micht be sene,
The Progne, and the Phelomene,*
 Quhilk caussit me to stay:
 I lay and leynit me to ane bus,
To heir the birdis beir,

I saw  my first swallow of 2014 yesterday, skimming over the young barley like a miniature fighter plane.  A marvel of aerodynamics.   Exactly a year since the first sighting of 2013, they have returned.  How do they do it.?
Easter is for some people a time of miracles.  The  immaculate timing of the swallows is my Easter miracle.
The hedgerows are greening up, the gean trees are in blossom, and the spring flowers are blooming. Of course, we are at least two or more weeks behind the south of England where we have just spent a pleasant few days.  There, the bluebells are out in the woods and, at Leeds Castle, among the numbers of water fowl, I noticed the coots and mallards had fledglings.

Leeds Castle

Coots

Here, we are a bit slower in gearing up for summer - only one swallow so far.

The flouris fair wer flurischit,
As nature had them nurischit,
Baith delicate and deir:
And every blome on branche and bewch
So prettily wer spred,

The dean leading to the sea is a dense mass of white blackthorn and yellow whin blossom.  Celandine, named from the Greek for swallow, primrose, dog violet, cowslip, wood anemone and dogs mercury are all out on the braes above the shoreline.

The Dean

The blackthorn blossom undamaged by wind and rain holds out the promise of a good crop later in the year for the sloe gin makers but amount of blossom and subsequent fruiting doesn’t seem to have any rational relationship.  Some years there will be a large number of sloes on one bush and none on another.  One thicket will produce a crop for several seasons then suddenly become barren.  The gean or bird cherry has a fickleness all of its own.  One year the cherries will be as bitter as sloes then the next, tartly sweet.
 At the moment, the froth of blossom is a welcome sight.
The sloe and the gean are as unpredictable as most of life’s occurrences. 
The arrival of the swallows is reassuringly certain.



**  The Cherrie and the Slae  Alexander Montgomerie (circa 1545-1610)
 *  Merle - blackbird    Maveis- thrush
    Progne - swallow     Philomeme - nightingale

There are no nightingales anywhere in Scotland now despite global warming!