April continued the general theme of the previous months - unsettled, wet and dull weather. The Easter holidays were a washout, but when the school children returned to their classrooms, the weather improved and the last 2 weeks gave us warmer and sunnier days. A bit rubbish for everybody on a family holiday. It remained fairly mild down here on The Lizard and certainly the fields and hedges were lush and verdant and in the business of serious growth, the race for space had started.
Down by the cabin we are building, there is a sea of pink Campions, Foxgloves and densely packed Ox Eye Daisies, all in their leaf stages. It will be glorious when the flowers are all out and blooming. Last year this same area was full of docks, thistles and nettles. We have done nothing to encourage or change this area, nature has done it on its own. Up on the top of the field the pretty blue flowers of Speedwell cover the open ground and the Three Cornered Leeks line up at the sides of the hedges. These colonies started small but each year has seen a growth in numbers. Mexican Fleabane, Cranesbill and Plantain are also colonising the field and around the yard close to the house. In the fruit garden the Raspberries, Grapevine and the Sweet Peas have all left the starting line but would love a helping hand from a bit more warmth.
I moved the bird feeders to the rock wall at the back of the yard (a small cliff face holding up the fields behind it, slightly terrifying if I think about that too much). I've always loved having it outside the front window as I could birdwatch whilst sitting at the kitchen table. However, it does attract rats on a regular basis and although I can live with the rats quite amicably, I don't like seeing them too close to the house, hence the back wall position. I have had to invent a bit of a Heath Robinson contraption for the feeders but the birds don't seem to mind and they are devouring the foodstuff at the rate of knots. At the end of the month on the 27th we saw the Swallows fly back into the yard and settle on the wires. Always a fantastic, magic moment, to think of where they have travelled from, the lands they have seen and crossed and sadly the many that have died from exhaustion, hunger or hunting. Their chattering filled the barns and outhouses as they re-built and mended their old nests in the rafters.
Whilst the Swallows brought joy, the news brought fury and desperation. The Westcountry Rivers Trust revealed that 2023 was the worst year for sewage discharge since monitoring began. Water company debt has gone from zero to £60.3 billion in the 30 years since privitisation. It beggars belief that this is legal. 'We need a new public model of water supply, one that treats water not as a private commondity but as part of the wider ecosystem, providing social equity as well as environmental sustainability'. Greed will never allow that idea to flourish but wouldn't it be great? (quoted from The conversation.com).
Wandering around the field I see that trees have gone from bud to leaf, the Hawthorn flowers are making the hedges look like it has snowed. The field is overflowing with a variety of grasses and rushes cover the ground down by the river. I came across an old rhyme pondering the differences in all this growth;
Sedges have edges,
rushes are round
grasses are hollow,
So what have you found?
I have yet to put this to the test.
The Honesty plant has come back this year and a new addition of a Teasel plant has erupted in the orchard. By all accounts it is much loved by the Goldfinch, in Autumn we can expect to see these birds 'teasing' out the seeds, so say the Woodland Trust. We are not short of Goldfinches, they appear daily and their song can be heard regularly throughout the day - I look forward to witnessing the 'teasing' sessions.
There have also been sightings of the Glistening Inkcap, hiding in the grasses under the Sweet Chestnut Tree. We have had the perfect weather for Fungi; warm and moist, with persistant rain rather than April showers. Across the month the weather has gone from the low 20s Celsius to snow and Spring storms but by the end of the month the promise of warmer days was in the air, alongside the Swallows.
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