MARCH: “Pincushion moss growing in the crevices of a stone wall. A stretch of freshly turned earth, fingered over by frost.”

“Pincushion moss growing in the crevices of a stone wall. A stretch of freshly turned earth, fingered over by frost.”   From “Ten Delights of a Garden” - part of her book, “Through the Garden Gate” by Susan Hill.

Flowering currant - almost there!

In this March 2023 blog, I’m writing about a fortnight of very wintry weather! I take the journey from the first of the month to the sixteenth and I hope that the second half of March will see off Winter and welcome Spring! Maybe the weather is less wintry where you are?

So where are the daffodils please? We have so much snow at present that ours have all disappeared. Socrates, my old pipe-smoking friend and Granddad-Bobby-lookalike, is slowly disappearing too. Even the topiary is up to its terrible knobbly knees in snow!

I love snow but, frankly, I had hoped for that first mild day of March by now!

Crystal ball photography

To My Sister

It is the first mild day of March:
Each minute sweeter than before
The redbreast sings from the tall larch
That stands beside our door.

William Wordsworth

I cut a small bunch of daffodil buds on the first of this month, set them down in a vase on the window ledge and put a lot of trust in them. The next day they had a hint of lemon about them and, slowly over the following days, they opened out to pale fragile blooms which cheered us until yesterday when I had to admit they were past their best. There hasn’t been a single one flowering in the garden yet. They were all still in bud when the snow came – and came again – and again.

On the second evening of March we were able to see how Jupiter and Venus had changed places. The sky was brilliant with stars and the thermometer was reading below zero at bedtime.

The cold seems to have been trapped since then. The first Sunday gave me the chance to work on the bed for this year’s meadow flowers and to clean out the bird bath. It felt like springtime as I was gardening but, once I came indoors, the temperature dropped back and the light snow started to settle on the garden. By Tuesday, the moon was full and so lovely over the snow-covered landscape.

Moon above the windfarm

Moon through the trees

The deer have been eating the privet so we put out oats for them in a wheelbarrow. Last night, Ginny caught them on camera. I have enjoyed the snow-covered countryside this winter – we’ve had a proper winter – but what saddens me is the struggle, for survival, of all the birds and animals who share our little corner of the earth.

Mothering Sunday falls on the 19^th of this month. I have attended church services when the focus was on mothers, the Virgin Mary and on Mother Earth. There is a wholesomeness about the celebration of Mothering Sunday. It’s sad when someone is unable to celebrate with their own mother – for whatever reason – but the concept of giving thanks for the nurturing of new life cannot be wrong.

Hare in the snowy meadow

From the evening of Monday 6^th until the evening of Tuesday 7^th March this year, Jews celebrated Purim with parties, fancy dress and drinking for the men. The word “pur” means “lot”. The Bible tells of how the Persians cast lots to decide which day they would massacre the Jews. The Jews were saved by the cleverness of Queen Esther and Mordecai - who was her adoptive father. Today, for the festival of Purim, Jews read the Book of Esther and give presents to celebrate the outcome.

The greatest celebration of March is that of resurrection – revival - renewal – of springtime washing over our gardens, parks, lanes, hedgerows, woodlands and countryside. It’s now 6pm on March 12th and I’m sitting at my desk looking out over snow-covered fields and listening to the birds singing their evensong – just for me! This morning the temperature would not rise above freezing. The birds were silent. Now we are reading 1°C and so they once again have that hope of spring being around the corner.

Redundant wheelbarrows

Occasionally Easter will fall in March - I believe that it will fall on the last day of March next year – but this year it will fall on 9^th April. There are many symbols associated with new life - the eggs at Easter, bunnies, chicks, early blossom, and the first sighting of frogspawn come to mind immediately. Frogs can stand the weather a little cooler than toads, so they are the ones to breed first. Both will stay in amongst damp leaves or decaying logs – sometimes under the ground – during the winter months but, come March, frogs are ready to mate and spawn. Here in Caithness I have seen frogspawn in the second half of March. As children in North Lincolnshire, we used to collect it and try to grow it into frogs in a dolly tub outside. I don’t think we were ever successful! The difference between frogspawn and toadspawn is easy to see – the frogs lay theirs in large clumps and these will float in the water – until the dog finds them! Toads make long strings of their eggs and they normally wrap them round the plants which grow in water. Sometimes the double rows of eggs can be 15 feet long. Frogs and toads will breed in the same pond but the toads stay deep down. The best time to see them is late afternoon or evening when it is raining and the temperature is in double figures – preferably 12°C and above.

Round the bend

The sloe or blackthorn is early to blossom and we have some planted in the new edible hedgerow. The sloes can be used to flavour drinks. Everything in that particular hedge will be of use but is also a delight in different seasons of the year. The blackthorn grew well in our Lincolnshire garden and its starry white flowers lit up the duller days when we played, as children, along the field edges between Epworth and Burnham and along the path beside the disused railway line beyond Northferry Farm in Belton. I think the contrast between the white flowers and the dark branches make the blackthorn a striking tree in early spring. Beware the spikes though!

Tonight there will be another frost and all of the new life will be on hold again. When the snow comes late - as it has now – the wonderful March light makes it dazzle. The temperature was above freezing this afternoon and so the upper layer of snow has melted just a little – but enough to notice a change – so tonight there will be icicles forming along the guttering. We have appreciated the beauty of the snow all winter – there has been a lot of it – but now I can see the tragedies that occur when the weather is so cruel – and I’m ready to see beneath the snow again.

Icicles on the greenhouse

Drinking my early morning tea when the house is still sleeping is a good way to start my day. In the good-weather-months I like to sit outside and be a part of the gentle beginning. In wintertime I sit quietly – normally in the kitchen – and think and read the meaningful words written by my hero philosophers! This morning was peaceful until I heard a roar like a waking dragon. At the point where the dragon’s fiery breath would have incinerated the kitchen, I heard a drip, drip, drip from outside the French windows, peeped out and saw the thawing of our wintry world. The rain had come and the snow was loosening everywhere. But then came more light snow showers and, by the time we walked the dogs, the wind had picked up so much that we felt we were walking in a blizzard – it wasn’t a long walk! The dogs didn’t like it either. Blizzards aren’t new to me. When we lived in Orkney we rarely saw snow that wasn’t brought in a blizzard. After ten years of living there I’d almost forgotten what vertical snow looked like. We had very little of that pretty dancing snow which gently settles evenly on the ground. There were often large stretches of fields and roads which the snow had left untouched, instead, piling up in corners and along dykes so that it might be several days before the deep piles thawed properly as the temperature rose.

Swing in the snow

Where did the pond go?

Now we are part of an area of around five square miles which has kept its snow while the rest of Caithness shows green again. Happily the snow had cleared from the row of daffodils, growing along the wall, when we took the dogs out. This meant that I had the opportunity to see the one and only daffodil which has opened out in our March garden.

Another morning, another snowfall! I cannot remember such snow! It’s now 14^th March and, while the sun is getting stronger, the night time temperature dips below freezing, Not long ago we were wishing for cloudless nights so that we might do a little star-gazing, now a few clouds wouldn’t be amiss – how much frost can the poor plants cope with? How many cold nights before the garden bird population plummets? I saw Little Blue this morning and felt cheered by him. The family tell me when they spot the wrens because they know how I worry about them. It’s the little ones who suffer the most. Thankfully we have nesting boxes in which they are able to shelter. Sometimes the number of wrens huddling in an average sized nest box can be as many as twenty.

Snow on the ivy

The open barns across the country must be havens for the bird population in these constantly low temperatures. From barn owl to wren, they will all be thanking the farmer with their music very soon. The barn owl with its blood-curdling screech and the wren with its high-pitched ringing, trilling song are both going to thrill us in the weeks and months to come.

“Nothing is so beautiful as Spring – When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush...  and thrush through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring the ear, it strikes like lightning to hear him sing.”

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Wet willow

We are blessed with owls in Caithness. I regularly hear the tawnies from home and often see the short eared owls - and barn owls too sometimes. Judith and Clemency spotted one at the turn-off to the causeymire as they drove to work this week.

There were barn owls nesting at Primrose Hill when I was a girl. It was quite ruinous by that time – a simple Lincolnshire cottage with no lane to it nor even a proper footpath. The stuff spooky stories are made of! In 1911, Fred and Louisa Widdowson lived at Primrose Hill with their baby, also Fred. Louisa, known as Lily in the family, was the niece of my great grandmother, Louisa (nee Dimbleby) Temperton. Fred Widdowson Snr., fighting with the Lincolnshire Regiment, died of his wounds in France in 1915. From a quiet Lincolnshire cottage, surrounded by primroses in March, to an ugly battlefield where human beings were used as cannon fodder. Over one hundred years later, Russian boys are suffering a similar fate in Ukraine. As the aggressors, they are the bad boys, but they are cannon fodder too – just like Fred Widdowson.

“Peace hath her victories
No less renowned than war!”

John Milton

Full River Forss

March can be a start-stop time in the natural world. Birds begin their courtship, then are antagonistic towards each other as, in a cold snap,  they fight for food and ultimately survival. With some plants too, there is a sense of sprouting optimistically, then, the frost and snow come back and things stop in their tracks.  A case of arrested development – not in the Meatloaf way! But some plants just carry on regardless. If poppies start to sprout early in springtime, they will often continue to grow regardless of the weather. Proper little toughies!

Rain on the honeysuckle

Grass will grow at 6°C and so will ticks! When the temperature reaches 10°C, the bumblebees will visit the open crocuses and really kick-start springtime. The buff-tail bumblebee is the familiar bee but there are three other types of bumblebee which you may spot in March too. I’m not very good at telling them apart but I do know the difference between a bumblebee and a honeybee. I believe this is the time of year when the queen bee will take off and form a colony. By late spring, the bumblebees will be up early and go to bed late but the honeybees get up later and go to bed earlier. And they don’t care – they have no shame!

Fields without snow!

March 25^th 2023 will be the 37^th anniversary of our first setting foot on the island of Orkney Mainland. Keith had been the year before and had been offered the post of maths teacher at Stromness Academy. We had four children back then and we took ourselves off to an unknown (to us) place where we believed our children would be happy. We were right! Orkney was everything we had hoped it would be. The children were out of doors on fine days and soaking up the natural world like little sponges. They had freedom to roam and a hunger to learn about their environment. As a family we visited the beaches and saw the true beauty of the seashore without the candy floss! I learned so much myself. The donkey rides and slot machines, the seafood stalls and saucy postcards, which were synonymous with my seaside experiences until then, faded into memory as I became acquainted with oystercatchers, arctic terns in summer, orcas, seals, different types of seaweed, groatie buckies and so much more. The memories of childhood visits to the seaside remain precious and the wonder of discovery with my own children fills me with a sense of gratitude for those ten years spent over the Pentland Firth.

Home playing hide and seek

Caithness has many similarities with Orkney and there are rivers and trees too and more hills, a greater variety of mammals – and we can even see Morven as we turn from our road and look right. Orkney was described by George Mackay Brown as “like sleeping whales besides an ocean of time”. A perfect description for an archipelago which connects one with the land, the sea, the skies and the rich history of humankind all at one sitting. Caithness is described as “the lowlands beyond the highlands”. We’re lower than the mountains for sure - but we are looking out, from our hillside, to the Atlantic and we can even see a little bit of Orkney too.

Hi! from Orlando

Flowering currant - made it!