Griddy

 

Griddy is a hedgehog which was trapped in my cattle grid and rescued by the two little girls in the photo.

He is not the first one to end up in one of my two cattle grids, I rescued one myself and have since filled in the grid nearest my house along the drive. But Griddy was trapped, the ladder out had rotted and he was very lucky that the girls saw him and had the sense to get in touch with the Hedgehog Preservation Society.

In spite of their ferocious appearance hedgehogs are really quite delicate. Had the girls not rescued him he could have died from hypothermia, dehydration, starvation, or a combination of all three. After 48 hours on a heat pad, warming up and resting, he was eating well and putting on much needed weight before returning to the wild. In the meantime, local craftsmen have installed a new ladder in the cattlegrid. In future there is a way out for any creature that falls into it.

The local representatives of the Hedgehog Preservation Society kept me informed of developments and when Griddy was ready for the great outdoors again, they came to me and asked if I would have him to be released. I was gratified to hear that they could think of no better place for a hedgehog than my garden and the surrounding banks, overgrown with brambles, shrubs, hedges and furnished with piles of wood and plenty of hiding places for such a shy creature. I know he is still here, he leaves me signs in the form of black hedgehog poo, although he has possibly started to furnish himself a winter den for hibernation. The weather is still rather warm and I hope he is eating as many slugs as he can find before he withdraws. Any food I leave out is usually gone in the morning, I sincerely hope it's not the marauding cats who eat it.

On the Home Front

Valley’s End is flooded for the third time in just a few weeks; storm Dennis was worse than last weekend’s Ciara. In my twenty years here I have not seen the bottom field, where I regularly walked my dogs,  as deep under water as this morning. The rain has been incessant and there’s more to come  next week. I am so sorry for my neighbours who live along the river bank and whose cottages and houses are inundated with muddy brown river water from further up the valley in the Welsh hills.

I have stopped slavishly following the news, I just can’t bear it anymore. There is never anything good on offer, just the same endlessly miserable, spiteful, nasty, mean reports and opinion pieces, full of doom and gloom. It is all too depressing. Instead I watch the birds busily devouring everything I put out for them from my kitchen window. I have been wondering: all those tiny creatures like siskins, blue tits, gold finches, nuthatches, what happens to them during storms?
Are they blown off course? Or do they shelter in the hedges during
the worst of the weather? I have whole families of gold finches
(middle picture) landing on my feeders, would they be the same
birds as the ones before the storms? They love sunflower hearts, perhaps they fight for the right to return? As soon as I fill the container the gold finches are back. The others are all happy with peanuts, fat balls and mixed seeds. As their name implies, nuthatches love peanuts best. (the bird with the go-faster eye stripe)














The previous week we had one good day and Paul and I worked in the garden, the first time this year. It was still very cold and the wind had already started, but there was a bit of sunshine and we managed a decent three hours.

I’ve told you about Paul before, he isn’t a patch on old gardener, but I’ve got used to him. He actually volunteered a comment or two while we were having our tea break. Last autumn he was still deep in the clutches of depression, barely able to function. Sometimes he seemed to be falling asleep on his feet. I can’t just turn him off while he is so poorly, I’d feel mean and unkind; I think he is glad that I am still employing him and perhaps that’s why he seemed brighter this year. It is also possible that he has recovered a bit, he has treatments and sees somebody regularly.

This person, who is a kind of health visitor, also helps him in practical ways. Paul has no other income than the money he makes from gardening
and a few artistic things like designing and
creating greetings cards, bird boxes, trugs,
and other woodworkings, large and small.
He is a creative soul and when he feels well
enough he spends time in his workshop.
He lives on an amount that wouldn’t cover my utilities bills, much less food and drink and treats. For years I and another employer have tried to push him into applying for benefit payments but he always insisted that he didn’t want to do this. This health visitor has persuaded him and helped with filling in the relevant forms and I am very hopeful that he will at least receive some financial assistance. I know people who are so good at milking the system that they are doing very nicely, and have done for years, yet someone like Paul, who certainly deserves help, goes without.

As you can see from the picture snowdrops will soon be over but the hellebores are only just coming into their own. Roll on spring.

Ornithology For Beginners

*

It doesn’t do to neglect your bird feeders. Maybe.

We have a lot of bird visitors to the garden, most of them lbjs (little brown jobs), but we are also blessed with crowds of blackbirds and, even more fortunately, several pairs of beautiful song thrushes, all of whom seem to have survived the breeding season.

We also have raspberry, worcester berry and gooseberry bushes growing close to a thick mixed holly, elder and maple hedge. The berry bushes used to be under netting in a fruit cage, but when this collapsed in heavy snowfalls, we didn’t bother to replace it. Laziness, lack of foresight, can’t-be-bothered-ness, call it what you will, we no longer have a fruit cage.

Paul, my new gardener - henceforth only gardener - said he’d take some of the tart goose- and worcester berries off my hands. Beloved uses some to make wine, but the rest of the annual crop usually remains in the freezer; I can’t eat them in gooseberry fools because of the lashings of cream and I don’t much like them otherwise.

So we took what we wanted for ourselves and left the rest for Paul and maybe any other interested parties to pick at their leisure. Unfortunately, the other interested parties turned out to be birds. Whenever I visited that part of the garden I heard scuttlings and scuddings and scrabblings and scratchings, which I took to be birds hastily seeking refuge from human intervention in the hedge; but the fruit remained on the bushes. Until one fateful morning: overnight every gooseberry, worcester berry and raspberry had disappeared,  not one single berry was left, the bushes picked clean as a whistle. A whistle and a quick cheap-cheap is all that the blighters left behind. They’re not even bothering to repay me in song.

Paul took some of our frozen gooseberries home with him.

The bird that feeds from off my palm

Is sleek, affectionate and calm,

But double, to me, is worth the thrush

A-flickering in the elder-bush.

so says the incomparable Dorothy Parker, but I don’t think so.

*Fruitless fruit bushes are boring, I’m giving you a picture of my leucanthemums/argyranthemums/marguerites instead. These flowers change their botanical name so often you might as well call them daisies and be done with it.

Weather for Chickens - Permutations 3

We are not far from home now; there’s just the castle field to come. I promised Millie a paddle in the river and I must keep my promise.

Here is another reason why I am not a great enthusiast when it comes to summer days: our daily walk takes us through lush meadows, where grass and wildflowers reach chest height in places. As I come down the slope to the river I can hear a great cry of joy going up “DINNER!” Before I go out I have to put on Jeans, socks and shoes, nettles sting me and bloodthirsty creatures feast on bare arms and legs.

The tallest plants to wade through are the common hogweeds (not giant hogweed) with their large flat umbrella-shaped (hence ‘umbels’) flower heads.  Reflecting sunlight they are very pretty but by moonlight they turn luminous, ghostly. They are a bit of a menace in one of the meadows by the river because lack of access makes mowing impossible.

Another large spreader by the river is water balsam; very pretty, but another eager coloniser. I think there have been efforts to remove it; as you can see, without much success. 

And here she is, almost at the end of our walk, enjoying a bit of a splash before we make our way through buttercups and clover, our errand done and tea waiting for us in the garden.

 Not bad for a total of thirty minutes’ walk, give or take 20 minutes either way for contemplation.

The Eye of the Beholder

It is almost too late in the season to sing the praises of one of my favourite wild flowers, the humble cow parsley. For nearly all of May most country lanes and hedgerows are edged with the frothy white blooms of Anthriscus sylvestris. The scent is unmistakable. Some of the paths I wander daily are only just wide enough for Millie and I must wade through the narrow opening between the mass of silken stems as if were swimming in a green sea.

Cow parsley has many names, among them adder’s meat, bad man’s oatmeal, Spanish lace, kex, Mummie die, Grandpa’s pepper; my favourite is the one Beloved called it when the two of us first tramped the country lanes of South East England many years ago,  Queen Anne’s lace. There is a lovely story about Queen Anne, who suffered from asthma, and her ladies coming out into the meadows and fields around Kensington to get fresher air. As they walked along in spring sunshine, they carried their lace pillows and made lace. The flowering cow parsley resembled the court ladies’ lace patterns, and so the country folk began to call it Queen Anne’s lace. It is a pretty tale, albeit too pretty to be truth.

The garden is bursting its seams, self seeders (volunteers) and deliberately chosen herbaceous plants vie for space with each other. For the moment there is ‘Lebensraum’ for all; the shrubs are still young and haven’t yet reached their final seasonal height and width; for the moment all-comers are welcome, particularly if they are as pretty as the wild geranium, which has insinuated itself amongst purple aubrieta. Wouldn’t this arrangement make a splendid wallpaper? Or rug?

How do plants know what sets them off best, which neighbours to choose to dazzle the eye of the beholder? Or is it that in nature nothing ever clashes as it does in artifice? I have seen pink, deep red and purple colours close together in a flower bed and admired the audacity of the wearers but I’d never dream of matching these colours in fashion, say, or room furnishings. Perhaps I am just not brave enough and too easily guided by the taste of the moment.

Old Gardener came today and we worked all morning. Neither of us lasted the full four hours. I noticed several times that Gardener sneaked a crafty sit-down on a wall and once on a bench. When he saw me looking his way he started to pull up weeds growing underneath. Poor man, I know only too well that the spirit may be willing but that the flesh is getting increasingly weak. Neither of us is as young as we once were.

Epic Journeys

The time has come for swallows, martins and swifts to leave the UK and embark on their epic migration to South Africa, so make the most of the last few in the skies. 

A final preen . . .

Swallows indicate the end of the summer when they depart for warmer climes and that is where our swallows are currently headed.  They undertake an impressive 6000 mile migration between the UK and South Africa twice a year in search of food. They nest in the UK in the summer, but as they only feed on aerial insects (the majority of which are large flies, such as horseflies and bluebottles), their food source starts to run out in the autumn.

Faced with the prospect of little or no food, they start to head south during September and October. 

It’s no walk in the park for these tiny birds as their extreme migration takes them south through Europe and across the Sahara desert.

They cover approximately 200 miles a day, generally at about 20mph – the maximum flight speed recorded was a whopping 35mph. 

During their epic journey, swallows easily fall prey to starvation, exhaustion and extreme weather conditions, not to mention being trapped and killed in Southern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa in their hundreds of thousands during the migratory period.  (The July issue of National Geographic covers the slaughter of birds in detail - don’t go there if you are at all squeamish)

 . . .  are we ready . . . 

. . . let’s go.

See you on the other side of the world.

The disappearance of swallows and other migrants in the autumn was for long a great mystery. Some firmly believed that they hibernated at the bottom of lakes or ponds, and others that they hid and remained torpid until spring.

“In the Northern waters, fishermen often draw up in their nets an abundance of swallows, hanging together like a conglomerated mass. In the beginning of Autumn, they assemble themselves together in the reeds by ponds, where, allowing themselves to sink into the water, they join bill to bill, wing to wing and foot to foot.”

Olaus Magnus, History of the Northern Nations, 1550

But in 1776, in the Naturalist’s Journal, Gilbert White asked:

“But if hirundines (swallows) hide in rocks and caverns, how do they, while torpid, avoid being eaten by weasels and other vermin?"

Pin

cushion,

snuffled out by Millie, late at night. I didn’t believe her when she said she’d found a ball and would I please throw it for her.

By morning the hedgehog was long gone, alive and well, not like the one in Philip Larkin’s poem:


The Mower

The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found
A hedgehog jammed up against the blades,
Killed. It had been in the long grass.

I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.
Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world
Unmendably. Burial was no help:

Next morning I got up and it did not.
The first day after a death, the new absence
Is always the same; we should be careful

Of each other, we should be kind
While there is still time.

Save A Bee Today

I find it impossible to kill any creature, I even open the window for a fly or wasp. I shoo mice out of the compost heap and garage; I pick up every bird which has flown into a window and prop it up somewhere safe until it has recovered. Every dead bird or mole I find is buried with full honours. 

It’s a good thing we have no poisonous snakes and other dangerous creatures; I’d probably see them off the premises with a rucksack full of goodies and a map to the nearest animal shelter.

Whenever a bee loses its way and ends up in the house, usually bashing into the window pane again and again, I try to save it by means of a clear plastic cup and a piece of card. Most of the time I succeed.  UK bees are on the endangered species list and we must look after them to safeguard our own future.

This morning before breakfast I found a huge bumble bee in the conservatory. It looked dead, flattened and legs akimbo, not surprising after twelve hours in solitary confinement without food or drink. Clearing it away after breakfast I pushed it a little and suddenly the legs twitched. Ah, signs of life, I thought, and immediately the full rescue package came into effect. I picked it up very carefully, took it outside and pushed it gently deep into a peony. A few minutes later it moved again.

The bumble bee, legs still akimbo, shoved its bottom around and straightened its wings. After a further five minutes of immobility it moved again, climbing further into the flower head and visibly disturbing the petals as it moved in and out.

Fifteen minutes later I went out again to check on the humble bumble’s progress and what do you know, it was climbing about with small sacks of pollen on its legs, making for the way out. The next time I looked it had gone. Mission accomplished! 

Slaughter At Valley’s End - Dove Slain

A thud
A crash
A scream.

Rushing to the back door,

The evidence left behind

a look confirms what we feared
has happened.

But wait.
A bird has crashed into the window,
that is so,
but who stands proud on the fallen dove?

Sparrowhawk,
merciless killing machine
chased her hapless prey into a blind alley,
triumphant
in the blink of an eye.

Victor and victim,
hunter and quarry,
part of the cycle of life.


Birds form almost the entire diet of the sparrowhawk; they take any bird from the smallest tit to a full grown grouse. Game birds, particularly smaller, immature birds, as well as lapwing, wood pigeons, collared doves - as in this case - and jay, are well within the female bird’s capabilities. The adult male is smaller, he seldom weighs more than150 gm (5 ounces). Even he will sometimes kill birds as large as himself.  Sparrowhawks are classic opportunists; a bird table in the garden is an open invitation to them, which means that gardens have become their favourite killing fields.

15 minutes later in a flowerbed.
Conclusive evidence. The hawk took off with the
plucked remains.

Gardener is a pigeon fancier; for years he kept pigeons in his backyard; some of his birds were valuable, successful racers; sparrowhawks took more than one of them. Gardener tells a story of him lying in wait in the open window, shotgun trained on the bird table, which the hawk visited at roughly the same time in late afternoon each day. As if the raptor knew the fate which awaited him, he stayed away on that day. And the next. And the next again. Gardener almost gave up. He was going to give it one more day and, sure enough, the hawk appeared suddenly, at great speed, out of a thorn hedge, making for a bird on the table. Gardener blasted him.

I hate this story and killing raptors is now prohibited. But when you see a sparrowhawk stooped over a fresh-plucked songbird, with wings cowling the victim like a vampire’s cape, I defy any one not to be distressed. I have song thrushes nesting in the hedge.This bird is becoming rarer every year. At 5.30 every morning, the male pours his loud, bell-like clarion wake-up call across the garden from the top of the tall conifer; should I not hear this sound one morning before the end of the natural season and  the hawk have killed my thrushes, I’d wish for a shotgun myself. I know that sparrowhawks have every right to survive too but, please, leave my songbirds lone. Take a rook or jackdaw, maybe another collared dove or two, even a pigeon or gamebird. It’s the second time that I’ve seen the hawk linger by the bird table and I’ve seen him pick off a feeding sparrow and bluetit , which gave me an unhappy jolt both times.  Perhaps I’d better move the feeding station or stop feeding altogether.

Hawks are not afraid of people, so standing guard won’t help.

Thank you very much, Hilary, much appreciated.

Friko’s solitary Alphabet Game - H is for Halcyon

Kingfisher

Photograph by Charlie Fleming

Currently mired in a period of blogger’s paralysis, and struggling to find anything in the least post-worthy, I remembered that quite a long time ago I started to play a solitary alphabet game, had a look where I’d stopped and found ‘H’ to be the next letter up. ‘H’ is a very common first letter in English; I wanted something impressive and asked Beloved for inspiration. He came up with 

“ haruspicy, haruspication "

a form of divination from lightning and other natural phenomena, but especially from inspection of the entrails of animal sacrifices.

The man is priceless.

“Thank you dear, but I think I’ll give that one a miss, delving in entrails is not what I had in mind for the moment."

But there is a word I’ve always liked, even before I knew what it meant “Halcyon”. Just try it on your tongue: hal-cy-on.  Doesn’t it sound beautifully mellow and promising? It reminds me of those long-ago days of summer when we children went to swim in flooded gravel pits, where the ground water was deep and came up icy cold and the black surface of the artificial lake hardly reflected any sunlight, making it appear opaque enough to walk on. For safety’s sake we had an older sister or brother in attendance but they were usually too busy eyeing up other teenagers to watch over us small fry. One or two dads were sprinkled among the children, spread out on a blanket and in charge of drinks and sweets and ready to bundle a shivering child in a towel before it died of hypothermia. We never had a dad of our own present but other children’s dads served as communal guardians. And not only guardians, but teachers as well. Long before I went to big school and officially learned to speak High German I had no qualms about attempting it anyway. Always willing to show off ‘big words’ and ‘long sentences’ I frequently got it wrong enough for any educated adult present to show signs of distress. One dad clearly couldn’t take any more and rounded on me, correcting my grammar in schoolmasterly tones, thereby embarrassing not only me and himself, but the other children around. “Don’t talk so much”,  the teenaged sister of my little friend said, “what I’m wearing to the dance is not your business.”

The 'halcyon days of old' is the expression mostly used. But halcyon is also the Greek name for the Kingfisher, born out of a gentle tale from mythology. Alcyone  was the daughter of Aeolus, either by Enarete or Aegiale. She married Ceyx, son of Eosphorus, the Morning Star.They were very happy together in Trachis, and according to Pseudo-Apollodorus's account, often sacrilegiously called each other "Zeus" and “Hera”. This angered Zeus, so while Ceyx was at sea (going to consult an oracle according to Ovid's account), the god threw a thunderbolt at his ship, causing it to founder, with all hands drowned.  Soon after, Morpheus (God of Dreams) disguised as Ceyx appeared to Alcyone as an apparition to tell her of his fate, and she threw herself into the sea in her grief. Out of compassion, the gods changed them both into halcyon birds, named after her.

A pair of kingfishers can be seen flitting under the bridge at Valley’s End at certain times of the year. You have to be very quick to follow the blue flash with your eyes. A flash is all I’ve ever caught up to now,  low over the water when the river is fast enough for fish to collect in the basin on the other side of the gravel bank.

The Spider And The Fly - My World

Do My World pictures have to be beautiful?

Can they be about something I found fascinating?

While having my muesli breakfast in the conservatory I heard a very faint buzzing sound. I looked around me and saw nothing that could be the source of the low buzz; following my ears, I came upon the scene of murder most foul: a tiny spider was busily circling a still (just) living fly three times its size, the noise came from the fly's vibrating wings. Round and round the spider went, even climbing up on to the fly and spending a long time near it's front end. (Do flies have faces?) The buzzing got fainter and fainter.

Eventually, the deed was done, the spider went off, under the rim of the shelf, leaving the dead fly behind. There wasn't a spider's web, there were no silver threads and I could see no nest. But I was curious to find out what would happen to the fly, why it had to be killed.

I have no idea how the spider did it, I saw neither pulleys nor strings, nor any kind of mechanical device; nor did he call for his relations to come and help him shift the massive weight of the fly.

But the next time I looked, the fly corpse had moved right to the edge of the shelf. There was no draught to shift it. The corpse was still there an hour later, I couldn't bear it any longer. I got rid of it.

I hope there are no starving spider babies cursing me.

Our World Tuesday

(Sorry Folks)

Things That Brought Joy - Thursday

courtesy the Guardian website

Today was short on joy, perhaps I could call it satisfactory. There was lots of rain on and off, for which we ought to be very grateful. The media, the water companies, even the government are telling us that we must preserve water; many areas in the UK already have hosepipe bans in place. This is a country where mild disquiet very quickly turns to panic. On the home front, neither Kelly, my cleaner, whose daughter was poorly, nor Gardener, for whom it was too wet, turned up. I was pleased, due to a poor night I felt far too tired to do much of anything myself. How is it that my knee always knows when the weather turns wet and windy? There I am, snug and cosy in my bed, I've switched off the light and compose myself to sleep when my knee starts aching. The rest of me is fine, it's the bit that connects the thighbone to the shinbone which plays sillybuggers. I stay in bed for an hour before I try a couple of paracetamol and a massage with arnica oil : no difference. I reach for a sleeping pill. Another hour later comes the second sleeping pill. Result: the following day I am a zombie. After lunch I take a nap, what used to be called 'forty winks' is now a power nap. Beloved is very kind, he takes Benno for his walk round the castle. I very briefly watch a pair of camera-shy goldfinches do the bookends theme, but they fly off the minute my camera clicks. How can they hear this through the glass of the kitchen window? The Guardian website has a much clearer picture of the little beauties.

The day was fast becoming frazzled, desultory. I tried a spot of editing. Progress on the memoir is painfully slow; I recently wrote a chapter about a very sad event in my early childhood about a stray dog and its short and brutal life and death. It took a lot of courage to take this memory out of its hideyhole and look at it in the sharp and unfeeling light of a computer screen. Writing it made me cry for the sad, lonely little child of long ago and attempting to edit the chapter today was a mistake. I must do this when I'm feeling bright and confident, it'll be hard enough even then. 

Tomorrow we are having friends to dinner. It is  possible that both Kelly and Gardener turn up and I won't have a lot of time to prepare a meal. I shall probably cheat and serve a bought pudding. 

I've already made the smoked salmon paté which is part 

of the starter, which means that I'll only have to 

cook the main course from scratch. 

There'll be six of us.

Laying out crockery, cutlery and polishing glasses today

also makes tomorrow less daunting.

To recap: Joy? Maybe not. But I have a kind husband who takes my dog out for me. There are sweet birds to watch. I have the time to take a nap to recover from last night and I have a pleasant evening with friends tomorrow night to look forward to.

And we finally seem to be getting the much needed rain.

Time Off

 Ash Tree Buds Bursting Open

Sometimes life gets in the way of blogging. I've had a few days away from the computer, and it felt good. The man - or woman ? - who said  'stop and smell the flowers' had the right idea. Not that I've done so - the only plant perfuming the air at the moment is the yellow broom; the smell hits me every time I step outside the back door. It's impossible to take a clear picture of this shimmering, golden confection, you'll have to be satisfied with a fuzzy one. Better still, go out and find a bush yourselves. You can't miss them, they're the ones that are alive with the sound of bumble bees.

Genista (yellow broom)

There are jewels to be found in the garden. If you get down to their level, tulips bathed in clear April sun become light, delicate, almost diaphanous gems. A lot of  plants are still very tentative around here, April is only the beginning of spring, but bulbs are happy to bloom full steam ahead; their life span is too short for ladylike reticence.

Gardener and I have been hard at it. It's now or never if we want to control overabundant new growth of wanted and unwanted inhabitants. Warmer days and a few very welcome showers have stimulated friend and foe alike to stir and stretch and test the air.

"Hey, Mrs. W., come and have a look. Is that a plant you want?" Gardener has learned to be a little more careful lately.  He also invented a few new words. He decided that the lawn, which is mainly moss now and has very little grass - most un-English - would be a pain to 'scattify'. "Besides", he said, "at least moss is always green and doesn't need cutting all the time." He is right. I don't mind at all that I don't have an English lawn.

I also found time to go down to the river and watch the randy drakes belabour the long-suffering dilly-ducks. Three of them went after one poor bedraggled female at the same time, quacking and blustering and puffing themselves up, all of them trying to climb on and stay on long enough to make sure that any offspring would carry their DNA. The poor dillies disappeared under the weight, squashed flat and highly indignant when they finally emerged again, making for the safety of the flowing river at speed.

This drake kept a beady eye in all directions, he wasn't going to let any rivals steal a march on him.

It's April and there are showers. Badly needed showers. I took the time to follow the clouds, from the brightest blue skies to dark storm clouds, turned sulphur yellow by piercing shafts of sun.

Figures in chiaroscuro against the late afternoon sky.

It was nice to take time off from the computer, I might do it again.



PS: For those of you who have mentioned the yellow broom which is colonising your landscapes:
that's not broom, it must be gorse, a different shrub; wild and prolifically self-seeding, it could be a pest. Yellow broom (genista) is a garden plant without prickles and well-behaved.

My World in Spring

On a walk in the woods, and on field edges, I looked for signs of Spring and, lo and behold, they are plentiful; although the trees are still without leaves, there's colour and life all around, if you look closely enough.

There's a whole bank of golden celandine smiling at the observer; tiny little plants which are a pest in the garden, as they tend to spread relentlessly, but in the wild they are a welcome sight.

Nobody could ever be churlish enough to begrudge space to the wild primrose. Every year at this time I go to seek it out on a steep and narrow bank between the castle mound and the river, a  secretive place, where the grey heron has sole fishing rights and
a rare curlew's mournful call can be heard.

Even here, in this almost unspoilt backwater, birds and flowers are disappearing.

I am glad that the few people who explore our paradise are walkers and nature lovers, who tread gently and quietly.

Nearer the village, garden escapees are colonising old walls. There are people who would like to see them 'tidied' away, but, luckily, there are enough fire breathing dragons like me to persuade them otherwise.

Once these delightful rock plants have taken hold, they are almost impossible to get rid of. A little judicious stuffing of crevices, when nobody is looking, helps them along nicely.

Who said hooligans are always destructive?

Back in the garden, things are progressing nicely,
miniature daffodils and tulips are shooting up everywhere under the watchful eye of a red-hatted pipe-smoking old  countryman, my one and only garden gnome, an expensive example of the genus, who was a present from a German friend.

He's made of china and has to be kept indoors until after the worst of the weather. He's likely to split his breeches otherwise.


He's already done so once and has been lovingly restored by another friend, who mended his broken body and then repainted him.

I would hate to part with him. Everybody is entitled to at least one piece of Kitsch in the garden; he is mine, a very much loved member of the household.

This is my contribution to the wonderful site Our World Tuesday where people from all over the world show off the beauties of their own regions.