"The river is
A frozen place
Held still beneath
The trees of lace.
The sky is low,
The wind is gray, (sic)
The radiator,
Purrs all day".
Part of a poem about January by John Updike. I can see the 'Trees of lace', all around in the woods but weirdly I can also see an abundance of growth that should not be so prolific at this point in the year and I am not sure if it will survive the harsh winter that we are being told to expect in the coming months. Daffodils are filling both hedgerow and fields. Down here on The Lizard in January, the daffodils are a regular sight, the warm, wet weather providing them with excellent growing conditions. Due to the lack of pickers in the last two years - thanks to Brexit - many fields were laid to waste and rotting daffodils were everywhere. I have seen more buses and vans out this year full of pickers but still there are many days when the fields are empty and no work is being done. Every time it rains, (and it rains a lot), the run off from these plants is relentless and it erodes the hedges as it pours off the fields, creating vast puddles of red topsoil. I wish they would grow food.
Early one morning, as the light was arriving, I ventured out into the field and as I turned the corner to go downhill, a white Owl flew up from the ground about 10 yards from me. It is the closest I have ever been to this magnificent bird. It then circled around, close to the ground, clearly inspecting it for prey. Having had a good look, it enlarged its circular search and eventually flew away. A beautiful moment, still and silent in the early morning. I have no idea as to whether this is the same Owl that once inhabited our barns, I hope so. This year there have been no sightings in our yard.
The RSPB Birdwatch took place on the weekend of the 27 - 29th this month. A glorious weekend here and the birds showed up in good numbers to feast at the table. At one point I counted 9 Goldfinches sitting in the tree, which I think should just about count as a 'charm' of goldfinches. In addition to that, there were Woodpeckers, Blue Tits, Long Tailed Tits, Dunnocks, Robins, Wrens, Chaffinches, Wood Pigeons and of course, the Squirrel. The RSPB had an all day video playing on various gardens around the UK, it made for fascinating watching, not least because of seeing some brilliant home made structures for feeding the bird population.
Although Cornwall had the most amount of sun in the UK, parts of the county had a good showing of snowfall and all of us got plenty of rain. We escaped the floods that brought Wales, The Midlands and Somerset to a halt. The Lizard only got a slight dusting of snow and brought the temperature to minus one degrees. Flocks of crows, (rooks? ravens? jackdaws?), were out and about gathering in the trees and lining the telegraph poles and swirling around in large groups, darkening patches of sky. It is easy to see how these birds have been depicted in myth and fairy tales as an ominous presence, it does feel quite menacing when out and about with them. I wondered if their gathering had anything to do with the weather?
And so to the plants. Celandine is forming various colonies around the field, each year there have been more and more patches, they have been joined by the new growth of Cornflowers, the Alexanders are still going strong inspite of being hit in December with cold spells. There are leaves from Feverfew and Oriental Poppies and an abundance of the upright shoots of the Montbretia plant which grows like a weed in these parts. In amongst the stone hedges the Polpody Fern puts in an appearance and alongside the dead chestnut tree trunk, (salvaged from the house timbers), there sits 'King Alfred's Cakes', sometimes known as Carbon Fungus. They do look very like morsels from burnt cakes. In my childhood I carried a pocket full of these hard little nuggets, knowing them to be good tinder for fire lighting, having been told that luck favours the prepared mind. They are food to many insects and small animals will make their homes inside them and the caterpillar of the Concealer Moth feeds on them. Another name given to them is 'cramp balls'. It was believed that if you carried them around, it would protect you from attacks of cramp. Now then, sometimes I get cramp at night, I wonder...
(Information on King Alfred's Cakes supplied by The Woodland Trust).
Comments