FEBRUARY: "February-Fill-Dyke, wet, windy, cold..."

February-Fill-Dyke,

wet, windy, cold,

Rushes waving,

wading,

Tall and strong,

Hedgerows budding,

Green shoots showing

through leaf litter,

Cold air blowing,

from the north,

the east,

Always bitter,

Biting hard on Spring.

New life on my parsley plant

The month began, here in Caithness, with a degree of ferocity but, by the end of the first day, it was relatively calm while we went out to find the comet between the North Star and The Plough. We didn’t find it. Well, we thought we might have but weren’t sure so, for the sake of accuracy, we didn’t! In the middle of the month, however, on a cold evening, after the most glorious spring-like day, we saw Jupiter and Venus very clearly over the wind farm. Jupiter was the higher of course – something about power and passion! The birds started off that day with their exquisite music and we had a message from Ginny and Judith to say that the first lambs had been spotted near Thurso. More have been seen since and now I worry about them in this gale!

 February is a month of contrasts. A cruel month when hunger becomes a problem in the countryside and natural selection comes into play – the survival of the fittest. Deer, particularly, struggle at the end of winter – mostly the young – the calves in their first year, but the ageing ones often perish at this time of year too.

Yet there is hope in February. While the farmer is maintaining his buildings and his machines, cutting the hedges, cleaning out ditches and mending fences, the birds are starting to pair up. Their song increases to fever pitch as they attempt to attract their mates and to defend their territories. Some, such as the rooks, are already at work. There are birds who may use the hair from your hairbrush to line their nests. Hang up a small basket of wool, human hair, pet hair and moss – and the jackdaws will ignore it and tug the garden string from your plant supports instead!

February Colour - Winter Jasmine

This morning's walk was calm and relatively easy after yesterday's in a gale. Yesterday, I stopped to catch my breath - today I stopped to catch the sweet trilling of the skylarks. These were this year's first recognised notes from our clever little neighbours and the effect on me was exactly the same as it was half a century ago when I used to walk along the dyke side, the disused railway line and back home along Belshaw Lane in Belton, looking for the first violets and primroses.

Whether the day be dismal or beautiful, frosty or sunny, the farmer still has the farm animals to care for. The cows have forgotten what it feels like to have grass under their feet and freedom to roam in the field but, as soon as they are back outside, they will kick their heels and fairly skip the length of the meadow.

 

February

By Francis Brett Young 

    The robin on my lawn

    He was the first to tell

    How, in the frozen dawn,

    This miracle befell,

    Waking the meadows white

    With hoar, the iron road

    Agleam with splintered light,

    And ice where water flowed:

    Till, when the low sun drank

    Those milky mists that cloak

    Hanger and hollied bank,

    The winter world awoke

    To hear the feeble bleat

    Of lambs on downland farms:

    A blackbird whistled sweet;

    Old beeches moved their arms

    Into a mellow haze

    Aerial, newly-born:

    And I, alone, agaze,

    Stood waiting for the thorn

    To break in blossom white,

    Or burst in a green flame....

    So, in a single night,

    Fair February came,

    Bidding my lips to sing

    Or whisper their surprise,

    With all the joy of spring

    And morning in her eyes.

February sunrise and its effect

Spring is beginning to stir. Catch that lovely smell of damp earth and new greenery and you’ll want to remember it all year long. There is no bottled perfume can compare! It’s not too early to get your hands in the soil, the salad vegetables and early potatoes can be put in under polythene and the swedes, cauliflowers, cabbages and broccoli are ready for harvesting. In sheltered places, aconites and snowdrops have been flowering since January and, by the end of February, the violets and celandines are in flower and the buds are fattening on the trees. Note the polythene and the shelter though!

 Our recently planted Araucaria is still looking healthy and some privet hedging which Clemency moved is looking hopeful too. By moving it she’s opened up the path between the main garden and the little cottage garden at the back and also let in more light to the shrubbery she’s creating. There are one or two shrubs which look a bit sorry for themselves but, on the whole, everything is looking good. The bay tree which she has put there has been eaten by deer but we think we caught it in time to save it. Clem has put a protective frame around it for the time being. How does one explain to deer that they are welcome in the little wild wood but we’d rather they left the garden plants for us to enjoy!

Temporary bay tree protection

 My potted bottle-brush plant was nipped by the frost but there are healthy parts which I’m hoping will flourish in the springtime. Our first bottle-brush plant was given to us by our friends, Ann and Vern. Vern had lived in Australia for a long time and knew such a lot about this Australian plant, Callistemon, from the Myrtle group. They had a beautiful specimen in their garden in Barrow on Humber. I’m hoping the one Keith gave me last year will survive our northern climate.

The pussy willow is cheering us with the blue/grey northern skies behind it. The little paws look like stars in the night when the sky is that steely February blue. The trees around us are waking up for another springtime – so amazing when you think about it. Life is new again. Bob Robin is singing from the Swedish Whitebeam and promising all manner of things - and maybe thanking us for his winter food?

My new rose: The Poet's Wife

The snow and mud which are associated with February can be great for identifying animal and bird tracks. They show up well in both. Ground birds have three toes pointing forwards and a shorter toe pointing backwards. Perching birds have the three toes pointing forwards but the backwards pointing toe is longer. To identify animal tracks it’s best to refer to a field guide in the first instance and then become familiar with the different tracks by matching them up over and over. The more you do it the better you will get! Sometimes however a track will have been partially obscured and you will be sent off in completely the wrong direction!

Badger cubs are being born about now but they won’t be seen for quite a few weeks yet – if at all! It requires patience and a cold, damp tummy to spot them in the springtime. One early morning, when we were living in North Lincolnshire, I went out with the older children to spot badgers. We were still and quiet and observed the wind direction to hide our scent. Nothing. The sky was getting lighter but we waited. Nothing. The morning was warming slightly but we thought we would wait a little bit longer. Okay it wasn’t looking hopeful at all. Suddenly, from the side of us, what looked like a squat hairy pig with a striped head, pounded the earth and disappeared very quickly, like magic. I would never have believed an animal of those proportions could have moved so fast unless I had seen it!

Rosemary getting ready for Spring!

February is also the first time the frogs and toads start to wake up. It depends on the weather and the geography. They seem to sleep in a bit longer in Caithness. A pond is such a positive addition to a garden of any size. Judith and Clemency put one in here last year. We’re waiting to see if it becomes populated. I do hope so. There is a big debate about the introduction of frogspawn to a pond. Some people frown on importing it from the wild but many ditches have been filled in recently so it’s probably not a bad idea to introduce it into the garden pond from the countryside. In that way we help to maintain the number of frogs by growing some on in the garden. It isn’t illegal to take it. You’d hope that people would be sensible with the amount they take and the conditions in which they transport it. The shorter the distance from the source to the garden pond the better. The best idea is to ask a neighbour if you may have some of their frogspawn. You won’t have far to carry it at all then!

Mum had a pond when she lived on Wharf Road in Crowle. My brother made it for her and it added such a lot to the back garden. She had fish, whereas we don’t have those in ours here, and she had a resident toad too – and visiting herons. The toads and herons we already have here at Stempster. There are quite a few toads and that’s a good thing because we don’t use chemicals to rid the garden of pests so we need a bit if help from Nature! We have frogs here too and we worry about cutting the grass owing to the number of little frogs we find amongst it. Now for the herons – well they are so graceful and a wee bit comical sometimes – but they can be a nuisance – I’ve known more than one pond liner succumb to their stabby beaks! They always take me back to my native Isle of Axholme – the northernmost reaches of the Fenlands of England. My mum wrote a little poem about a heron and my brother painted a picture of one with its shoulders hunched in quiet reflection – almost sleeping on the job! I sometimes think they look a bit like pterodactyls as they fly low over the marshes.

 February memories of my childhood home include watching the men employed as hedgers with their strange hooks and other implements. They were invariably swathed in old greatcoats, tied at the waist with baler twine – sometimes an old broad leather belt, and almost always wearing a flat cap to keep in the body heat which would be lost through a head of thinning hair. There was one man who wore a floppy felt hat instead. I can see him in my mind’s eye but I can’t name him now. How sad not to be able to name him when I saw him so often in the village. I always wonder if, when we think about someone who has been a part – no matter how small - of our lives in the past and is no longer with us, it is as if we are praying for their soul’s rest. We were a relatively small community in the 1950s and everyone knew everyone else. The men who tended the hedges also cleaned out the ditches and mended the fences. They were familiar figures and very much a part of our rural lives.

Dainty leaves of peppermint

Another February memory is of watching the dopey hedgehogs wandering along the lanes and country roads like wee drunkards. When they first wake up they are in great danger because their little nervous systems are not transmitting quick response signals. It’s a bit like getting out of bed in the early morning when the phone rings unexpectedly. Who hasn’t bruised themselves on the bed frame at one time or another! Often hedgehogs will come out a month or so later but they do move house during hibernation and sometimes they will stay active – well fairly active!

The frame for the swing is now up and waiting for the seat to be hung there. It has been a problem for some time. We’ve had the component parts since the autumn. Ginny, Judith and Clem needed another pair of hands. I tried to help but lacked the confidence to support my part of the structure. This week Lydia and the little ones have been staying with us so the four younger women made a great job of it. The little ones were kept indoors while Mummy and The Aunties had such fun putting up the frame. It was great to see my grown-up daughters working together – and succeeding! Took me back a year or twenty!

Finally up and running... our new swing

Behind the swing the snowdrops are flowering in clumps and one day they will form a carpet of white and green as a backdrop. Clemency put some at the back of the pond and they are nodding there already. I thought it would take longer for them to form flower heads as they were new plants obtained only last year. Snowdrops are delightful at this time of year – and they are just the start of the season’s flowers – such a lot of hope in a little jiggling head. The news disturbs most of us at present if we are honest. I would never suggest we ignore it but how marvellous is nature when it can uplift us with the purest of promises.

 

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -

That perches in the soul -

And sings the tune without the words -

And never stops - at all -

 

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -

And sore must be the storm -

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm -

 

I’ve heard it in the chillest land -

And on the strangest Sea -

Yet - never - in Extremity,

It asked a crumb - of me.

                                           Emily Dickinson