MAY: "Creative Power in its peaceful form."

Gives not the hawthorn bush a sweeter shade 

To shepherds, looking on their silly sheep, 

Than doth a rich embroider'd canopy 

To kings that fear their subjects' treachery?

- William Shakespeare

Nest in the log store

This blog is a little bit different. It's a series of questions which inspired some May-based thoughts and recollections. Hopefully you'll enjoy the format - we'll be back to normal next month, but might try the Q&A again later in the year.

Beech hedge planted as twiggy bits this year

If you could choose one word to sum up the Mays in your childhood, what would it be and why?

This has had me pondering. I was brought up in what was then rural Lincolnshire - lots of building of houses and businesses has gone on in the intervening years. I haven't been back for a while but the last time I was there I could still make out the countryside which was my childhood playground - well, most of it. No point in listing what we didn't have in those days - what we did have was a sense of belonging to the land. I was in awe of it all. My world  seemed many layered and multi faceted. Everything had its bearing upon everything else. It was clear to see - even to a child.

The bare boned winter months should have made the correlation easier to see - but it didn't! So much was hidden from view until springtime came. This happened slowly after the cruelty of February. Piece by piece, the world of nature began to show itself. March and April exposed the ongoing restoration of my world. But it was May, with its hedge blossom, its fruit blossom, its Queen Anne's Lace, its twittering and its warmth, which amazed me.

With its beautiful newness, May was, for me, the time to run, skip, jump and to sing, sometimes absolute gibberish, with the pure joy of it all. 

So what's my word? The common denominator is the greenness. Intensity of greenness! Everywhere! Green like the grass, green like the leaves on the trees and hedges, green like the herbage, the green of buds yet to open, the feathers of a finch, of a woodpecker, the greenness of youth - of innocence. 

I may not do much running, skipping and jumping now but I still feel the joy of May. My childhood in the Isle of Axholme was the start of my passion for the natural world. Those walks with my granny to spot the new life down Belshaw, the games we played amongst the wildflowers at Burnham Beck and the vastness and the echoes of Cowboy Canyon, off the Epworth to Belton road, had a profound effect on me. Over it all though, is the sense of the greening of the year - and that happened in every memory I have of May. My word for the Mays of my childhood is "greenness".

Swedish Whitebeam in the evening light

If you could choose one word to sum up May in Orkney and Caithness, what would it be and why?

May is a month of contrasts here in Caithness. The day can begin with mist or rain and the sun will try to push through, then, in the early evening, it happens. All of a sudden you forget the greyness and you think, "Can this get any better?" It was the same in Orkney too. The first May we were living there, in 1986, I wondered if we'd done the right thing moving so far north - the walk to school in the mornings was damp and a bit dreary, but things were improving as the children came out of school and, by the time we were home and they had changed into their scruffs, the sun had made it! Who wouldn't want to be out playing in glorious sunshine, overlooking Scapa Flow?

May was - and is - the first time for taking off the winter coat and, emptying the pockets because it's not likely to see the light of day again until the beginning of Autumn, hang it up in favour of something more lightweight. You hope! Sometimes May is so chilly in the early mornings that the big coat comes out again almost straight away!

A month of contrasts. A month when anything can happen - even snow! 

The appreciation of the mammals and birds producing their offspring, the gratitude for the flowers and new growth everywhere, the relief when outdoors becomes an extension of indoors are all wonders of May here in the north of Scotland but, when it comes to the one word, I'd have to choose "tourists". The wonders of the natural world are not eclipsed by them but nature is here around us all of the time and we develop with it but, and this is only obvious to those who live in such an area, tourists appear in droves in May. In Orkney, it was for the breeding birds. In Caithness it's the birds too but the Flow Country is a big draw, waking up in late spring and supporting so much life in its seemingly bleak landscape. If you've never visited Caithness in springtime, you've never seen such an impact of long stretches of furze/gorse - on a dull day it gives us sunshine! The fields too, as they tumble down to the three main rivers, are a joy and themselves are rich in wildlife - as are the dunes, beaches and cliffs. We know where to look and I find myself wanting to stop the campervans and let the tourists in on our little hidden paradise of about 712 square miles! Sharing is caring! So May in Orkney and Caithness has this significant word for me - tourists!

Wasp on lilac

Can you share some stories about a plant or animal which you always associate with May?

I'm guessing you mean for me to choose just one and to share more than one story about whatever it is I've chosen. There are lots so this will be tricky!

I've put all of them into my thinking cap, pulled it over my head and taken one out!

Lilac!

Much maligned by some people I know but I have always thought of it as a friend. It's said that it sends shoots everywhere and once you have it you can't remove it - but who would want to? It is such a delightful prelude to Summer, I can't see why you wouldn't want to have one if you have a garden. When we moved to the house in Wick from Barrow on Humber in North Lincolnshire, a lilac was one of the first plants I put into the garden. The garden had been sanitised! Nothing growing but two maple trees and a holly. The rest was grass and pebbles. The pebbles had pots on them, each standing on a plinth. The pots were moved into the tiny yard, plinths stacked and pebbles and membrane beneath them disposed of. I cut out shapes in the grass and into the biggest shape went the lilac along with a red may which I'd grown from a cutting taken at Barrow. Over the years other smaller plants went in to join them.  By the year we left Wick, the lilac was well established and steeping the garden in its lingering fragrance which can only be described as classic springtime!

When I was a girl my Grandma Johnson sometimes collected me on a Sunday afternoon and took me, in her little Volkswagen Beetle, to visit relatives and her friends who were living in other parts of the Isle of Axholme. Every May we would call on two ladies in Haxey who were her old friends. They had an abundance of lilac in their garden and my recollection is that they had white lilac as well as lilac lilac! They would cut some for her and she would share it with my mum. The vase of lilac made our house into a garden - the smell of it  crept everywhere. It never seemed to last long inside though and it drinks a great deal of water - when it's been cut and placed in a vase and also when it's growing in the garden. This makes it a good place to plant where you get pools of water after a deluge.

I have a thing about white lilac. Maybe it's because there's so much of the other, that it seems quite special. Don't get me wrong though, lilac lilac is very beautiful. Most of the white lilac I've come across is double lilac. I intend to buy some for Stempster soon. In the plant world it is the colour which dominates and white is an uplifter in the border or the shrubbery. I've seen borders of only white flowers - but they don't work! I find myself looking at the different foliage for interest. A colour border without white however is reduced in its impact. For me the best borders and shrubberies are only punctuated with white. So I'm going to splash out and buy my white lilac!

The music of Ivor Novello has always given me pleasure - listening to it and singing it too. "We'll Gather Lilacs" is from "Perchance To Dream" which was staged at the end of the second world war. People were still singing it in the 1950s and I can't help giving it a go every springtime when the lilacs are out. Takes me right back to my childhood when most people in our villages had a lilac in their gardens.

Flutteryby

On our first date, my husband and I met friends at Alkborough Working Men's Club. Afterwards we all walked through the village to Chris and Paul's house. The delicious perfume of lilac was everywhere. Lilacs tumbled over garden walls, partly blocking the path in places. It was May and the cooler evening air seemed to enhance the fragrance. May and lilacs seem to go together, a May without lilacs would be like Christmas without carols!

We have inherited a lilac on the drive here and Clemency bought some more last year - as small plants, which all seem to have taken. She planted two in  the grass alongside the boundary - either side of the old entrance, no longer here, which opened onto the avenue. The avenue has now been spruced up by Euan.  Clem has plans!

And last but by no means least is the little lilac in the cottage garden at the back of the house. I look after that bit. Some years ago, when we lived in Wick, Clemency gave me a lilac for Mothers' Day. We planted it on the day itself. It never progressed. In fact I thought I'd lost it at one point. The next people to live in the house couldn't have been blamed for taking it out as a no-goer! With this in mind I took it out and brought it here. I planted it in the little cottage garden so that I can see it from the kitchen and today, eighteen months later, it is flourishing, lots of shoots - healthy ones too - are appearing, as if to say "This is where I belong!"

May and lilac?  Well they own each other really!

Bee on lilac

Milton wrote that “May … dost inspire mirth and youth and warm desire.” How does this reflect how you think of and experience May?

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear!!! Almost seventy and you ask me this!

A challenge - not because I have nothing to say but because I have rather too much.

You've got to love Milton haven't you? This poem is a simple tribute to the month of May and paints the May stage of springtime beautifully. Each month in spring has a glory of its own but May always makes me think of the child who has come safely through those early years of risk. We all now look forward to a more certain future for him/her. Those early years are not as worrying as they were in the past for those caring for babies and young children but there is  still a fragility about them. And, even today, in Sierra Leone and Afghanistan for example, infant mortality continues to be unacceptably high.

In the garden, so it is with seeds sown earlier in the season. The chances of them reaching maturity are slim if they are sown in March and April - but, sow them in May and you have a much better chance of watching them grow. I know this from experience and yet I still take a chance with some of them. I'm particularly inclined to sow nasturtiums too early - did it again this year! On April 15th, I put a yellow rose into one of the two new planters given to me for Mothering Sunday and added three different types of nasturtium seeds. The rose took off straight away, responding well to the fresh compost and stretching its roots. It produced new growth almost immediately. But the nasturtiums? On Friday, 12th May, when Dot and I were having a look around the garden in the sunshine, we spotted the first tough little seedlings by the yellow rose. And they really are tiny toughies! They seem to miss that fragile might-shrivel-and-die stage which you get with many other seedlings.

I'm optimistic for a display of jolly yellows and oranges in the summertime.

Mirth? Well if it means cheerfulness and an inclination to bring on grateful laughter, then that is what I too feel about the month of May. I see a tiny goldcrest drinking at the edge of the pond and I laugh, albeit lightly, out loud. I find a shoot on a shrub or rose which I feared may not have survived, and I chuckle to myself. I watch the little vole carrying off titbits into its hole in the wall and my spirits are lifted. So I think Mr. Milton got that right - May definitely inspires mirth!

It isn't difficult to imagine the youthfulness inspired by May - at all stages of life. On a May evening, step outside for a moment and take in big breaths of the garden. The perfumes are exquisite in the damp of the evening - not just the flowers but also the soil. It can't be bottled! If it could I would have shares in the company for sure!! Many years ago Goya made a perfume which they named "Meadowsong". It was my favourite for a very long time, then they took it out of production. Fruity smells were coming in at that time and people were abandoning light and delicate fragrances. A pity! But back to the scent of a May evening in the garden, sometimes I unlock the door at bedtime and just stand there, listening, watching for movement in the sky and at ground level, and inhaling the sweet youthfulness of it all. For a brief moment I'm all my ages at once - the curious child, the complicated teenager, the young mother, the adoring granny - and, through all of these, the lover - of Nature and of all those I've been blessed with to love.

Now we come to the warm desire! Oh dear Mr. Milton!  In the natural world there is a tangible hunger for life at this time of the year. It's all around us. The countryside is so very busy. There is activity everywhere you look and in places you don't see too. It's not the unkind hunger of February when so many things struggle to survive, it's the hunger to embrace all of this newness - a warm desire combined with gratitude for an allotted place in the wonderful new world. The warmth of the desire to feed on this gift of May can only be properly felt by those living things which are aware of their place in it.  The closer we are to the earth, the more intense will be our love of it.

I shall be seventy next month and I can honestly say that there has never been a time when Milton's mirth, youth and warm desire did not stir in me during the month of May - even in the tougher spells.

Leveret in the grass (orchard)

Can you describe the most beautiful place in the Isle of Axholme during the month of May?

Very difficult! Because I have links with so many parts of the Isle, I knew it very well and now I find myself recalling the most beautiful areas, jumping from one to the other in my mind and unable to decide on any one of them. So I'll paint a few little scenes instead of just one - if that's alright? It's important to note here that the Isle in 2023 is not the same as the Isle in which I lived as a child, nor is it the same as the Isle into which the first four of our children were born - before we moved to Orkney in 1986. My roots are still there though. Although I now feel very Scottish - there's a sizeable percentage of Scot in my DNA and, in Scotland, if you want to belong, you do - there's a lot of the Islonian about me still!

I have memories of may blossom along the edges of the fields around Studcross Cottage. It was extensive and perfumed the air, with its strange musky smell, from Battlegreen to Carrside and away to Wroot in one direction, to Burnham in another. The muddy lane we lived on became dusty and some of the dust was whipped up and onto the hedges. Our hedge at Studcross Cottage was of privet and the May dust seemed to settle readily on that. 

I couldn't ride a bike until I was nine but, once I'd learned to ride, I took off and soaked it all in as I went further than I'd ever been on my own before. Helling down Hogarth ( we said "Oggatt") Hill there was more may blossom. Riding out on the Wroot road there were early dragonflies. Skidding around corners in the villages, the fragrance of lilac and late wallflowers enveloped me. My bike was an extension of me and it opened up the Isle for my observation and enjoyment. Sometimes I would explore with friends but mostly I went alone. 

Often I would bike to visit my grandparents down Carrhouse, on Belshaw Lane. In May, their garden was my paradise. Apple blossom was profuse in the orchard, gooseberries were filling out on the vicious bushes, strawberry flowers were growing up to be fruits, laburnum dripped its yellow over the lawn and Esther Reads were developing their shiny buds in amongst the dark bottle green and equally shiny leaves. Walking on the mossy lawn was such a delight - it felt like a cushion beneath my feet. There were blackcurrants searching for the sun to fill them with sweetness, cherries forming on the huge tree in front of the scullery and roses sending bronze-red shoots up the wall by the door. Grandad's vegetables and salads grew in short rows at the back of the cottage and I was never allowed to leave without a saddlebag full of produce.

Across the lane from there, Mr. Kitson was in his garden at all hours. As a child I was fascinated by the rows of tall sticks used to mark and support whatever was growing in his garden. Later in the summer there would be rows of paper bags covering dahlias and chrysanthemums. 

Biking home, the Queen Anne's Lace shook a little with the air current created by my movement. It's a lovely plant, sometimes called "Cow Parsley" or "Mother Die", and belongs to the chervil group of plants. The name"Mother Die" is unfortunate and I was told that, if I picked it, my mother would die! However, I'm more inclined to think the name refers to poor Queen Anne whose deep desire to be a mother was thwarted by miscarriages and stillbirths. Only one of her children, William, Duke of Gloucester, was to survive infancy. Money, power and  privilege were of no help to Queen Anne. William died at just eleven years old. So I prefer to call the beautiful white roadside plant, now adorning our British roadsides, "Queen Anne's Lace"!

I can't finish this answer without mentioning the big blue skies which go on forever in May across the fertile fields, the rivers and drains and meet them at a hazy point on the horizon. When I was teaching at Luddington, the drive there at any time of the year, was an opportunity to enjoy those big skies, but in May they were of a blue which belonged to heaven.

Garlanded garage!

What is your favourite gardening job in May and why?

Oh this one's so easy! Without a doubt my favourite job in May is watering the garden! 

There are so many things to do in May but I get a genuine thrill from watering things. I stand with my hosepipe and really soak everything. Some things look so needy that I wait until I can see water settling in tiny rivulets around them. I stand and watch it soak down, down, down into the earth around the sorry-looking plant. Within hours I can see a difference. 

Sowing seeds is exciting and done with much hope. Weeding is a chore which has to be done to free all of the growing things. Although May isn't the best month for pruning as such, dead wood can still be removed - and should! Sleepy plants can be divided in May. It's best to do it before there is obvious root growth. Plants can be put outside into their permanent living quarters in May. These are the ones you've grown inside or under glass - check the (often questionable!!) weather forecast first though. Be as sure as you can be that the frost has packed its bags and gone back to the permafrost!

There are lots of other jobs too. The one I absolutely love, more than any other, is the watering. This year we have had some rain and it's very welcome but I still have to gift my garden with water from the hose pipe or from watering cans - the larger of which I find increasingly difficult to carry when full!

It's a part of our understanding you see. The garden and I have a two-way thing going between us. In this instance, I give it so much of the wet stuff that it visibly quivers - thrilled by it. Things stretch - down, up and out. They grow greener, produce more and more buds and they find it easier to face the sun. The sun then warms them and makes them stronger. And then I am the one who is thrilled - you might call it symbiosis. We're in partnership - the garden and I!

Water is precious and essential to all forms of life in one way or another. I only wish every person on this planet had access to clean water. It isn't the case. Many African countries have limited access to clean water - as does Papua New Guinea in the Pacific.In fact, around 75% of people are fortunate enough to have access to safe water across the globe. When you think about it, that means that 1 in 4 people doesn't. An appalling statistic by anyone's standard!

Living here in Scotland, we have a lot of water and it's generally well (forgive the pun!) managed. There's no reason why, with careful management, we should be short of water here. We share ours with the birds, wild animals and with our garden. The sheer delight they give back to us exceeds my Maytime watering efforts!

Potatoes in bags

Flanders and Swann sang, “Farmers fear unkindly May: rain by night and hail by day!” and Christina Rosetti observed that “Yet though it be the chilliest May with least of sun and most of showers, its wind and dew, its night and day, bring up the flowers.” How has the weather shaped your memories and experiences of May?

I think both quotations have something here! The thing is, however, that whatever the weather throws at us in May, it's better than winter weather which has little hope of sunshine with it! There's always some sunshine in May - may not be a lot - but there's always some. When it comes, there is enough power in it to warm up the land  sufficient for growth. 

There have been Mays when the earth seemed to long for a kinder, gentler treatment - as if all living things held their breath and conserved their energy for the real springtime that would surely come. 

Maytime can be - should be - absolutely glorious. Some Mays have been the start of summer weather and that has gone on through to September. But we can never be sure - will it/won't it last? That's the thing about May - it's so unpredictable.

Of course childhood memories are all sunshine and cuckoos calling - but was it really always like that in May? I doubt it. A drier May will mean that the hayfever season starts a bit earlier. As a little girl I had "summer flu" in May - turns out it was the fever part of the hayfever! Like most things, once you know what it's about , it never seems so bad! I remember being so poorly I stayed in my bed and I could hear children playing not far away, birds were singing, tractors chugging down the lane - and I felt miserable!

Today is 26th May 2023 and here, in West Caithness, it's a lovely day - the earth, and everything in it, is oozing fragrance. I find little mammalian messages in the grass and the blackbirds are stealing my compost - the pot into which I sowed Chinese Lanterns about three weeks ago! The blue tits are cramming food into their tiny beaks and doing repeat runs into the bee house in order to feed their wailing balls of fluff. The mail box, bought to save Postie's legs, opens its jaws to receive a consignment of caterpillars for growing great tits. The buds on my Oriental poppies are huge, those on the lupins are coming now - and I even have one on the peony I thought I'd lost. Candles are forming on the Horse Chestnut and the Swedish Whitebeam is providing food and shelter for all comers.  This is the May I want to remember.

Bluebells behind the pond

Ellis Peters said, “Every spring is the only spring, a perpetual astonishment.” Can you share a story about a spring fact (natural or cultural) which you only learnt as a mature adult?

I'm learning a lot as an adult - not sure how mature I am though!!! When my children were young I learned so much with them. I saw the miracle of nature through their young eyes and I wanted to know more - for them - and for me. I've chosen to share my learning about soil improvers here. Two things I have learned very recently will help to improve my garden, and yours too, this springtime. These are quite likely already on many people's to-do-list for their garden in spring but there may be someone else like me who's a slow learner!

We moved to Orkney in March 1986 and by May of that year we had found our sea legs! The sea was all around us and we spent hours just watching it, walking the beaches, beachcombing and collecting shells and stones. 

I've learned, since then, that seaweed is good for the garden. Put it straight onto the garden in wintertime and the weather will wash away the salt before it's time for springtime sowing/planting. Collecting  it in springtime, however, means you will need to rinse it well. Worth the effort though as seaweed is a great fertiliser and free! I've been told that some councils will need to be notified if you collect seaweed from their beaches so it's probably a good idea to check.

Going a long way back now - to when I was a girl in Lincolnshire - another soil improver was all around me. I thought the little velvet coated gentlemen who shared our fields and gardens were adorable. I never saw them - unless it was their pelts hanging out to dry - and that became very sad when I realised they couldn't take them off and put them back on! They appeared in stories like "The Wind In The Willows" and seemed completely loveable to a little person. But it became apparent they were not the farmer's friends because they contaminate silage. They are considered agricultural pests for this reason and also because their molehills reduce the yield from pastureland. Now it's the molehills I'm getting to! I was told recently that the soil they excavate is worthy of compost - I had no idea until this year. I can imagine you thinking - well what sort of a gardener is this? Myself? I felt a mixture of delight at finding out and annoyance at having wasted opportunities for so long!! 

I would never have killed the moles - and in fact I always think it is quite nice to know they are here by their tiny hillocks. I'm not the trapping/ poisoning type but I can understand how disappointing it must be, for small farmers particularly, to be disadvantaged by Moldywarp's guerilla warfare!

I saw a live mole once - not so long ago - it was crossing the road in front of the car just south of Lybster on the A99. It was the strangest sight. I felt quite privileged and yet a bit worried that the poor little creature might have something wrong to make it behave in that way. 

Bill Penrose (always Mr. Penrose to me) was a bit of a legend in our family. He tended the larger part of our garden when we lived on Belshaw Lane. Mum had her own little garden and the rest was in the care of Mr. Penrose. He didn't like moles. He could hear them by putting his ear to the ground. That's something which has stuck with me. I still find it hard to take in and yet Mr. Penrose was not prone to exaggeration. Maybe he did use their molehills as compost - I don't suppose I would necessarily know if he did. Anyway, this springtime I'm on the lookout for them - but they seem to have moved. I'd like to use the molehill soil on the little cottage garden. It seems John Innes knew about it and  used it in making the famous compost. We have to buy far too much bagged compost here. I'm making my own in the corner of the cottage garden, looks like it's ready for turning now, and Clemency is making hers in the kitchen garden. I'm hoping we will be able to stop buying it in bags soon. East/West - Nature's best!

Allium

This May sees the coronation of Charles III. What do you most admire about the king as an individual?

I can only tell you what I most admire about the king as an individual within the constraints of the information I'm allowed!!! We're not allowed much of an insight really you know!

When I was younger, he was very interested in architecture and I admired that about him - the fact that he spoke out and shared his knowledge - I didn't always agree with his views but I thought it was courageous of him to share them.

More recently I find myself wishing he would exercise power to communicate his excellent awareness of the worldwide crisis we find ourselves in regarding the future of our planet. He knows a lot - and he cares a lot. I admire that he shows he cares. People don't care how much another person knows until they know how much that person cares!!  Now I'm hoping King Charles will not hold back and will be a great advocate for the environment.

He has shown he enjoys and appreciates the world of nature - the blood sports make me shiver though! The Glorious Twelfth is not so glorious if you're a grouse!! 

The king has painted some rather good watercolours into which he has incorporated his humility in the face of nature. I love that he opens up in that way.

His namesake, King Charles 1st, the unfortunate Stuart, was not shy of altering the natural world for gain. He commissioned Cornelius Vermuyden to drain huge swathes of land in Eastern England. Although you can still see evidence of the drainage programme, it wasn't entirely successful. The land flooded again and pumps were used to remove the water. The worst of it though, in human terms, was that it rode roughshod over the lives of many people who lived there. The poorer ones had previously lived by fishing and waterfowling. It was not just the poor people who suffered. There was anger and depression across the fenlands of England and some of it manifested itself in aggression. Lots of stories to tell here!

I just don't see this king signing anything that would cause that kind of devastation. What I would like to see him add his name to is the movement for improving nature conservation and development in the face of greed and power-grabbing.

He's an admirable man as far as I can tell and, though I'm no royalist, I wish him well.

Clematrix (evergreen)

This year, May is bookended by bank holidays: May Day (1st May) and Whit Monday (29th May). How much will have changed between these two dates – in the garden and further afield?

So much!

May seems to me to be the month when our countryside and gardens change completely. From a pleasant warming of the earth to a right royal flush of life and living. This extreme greenness everywhere is beyond imagining in January!

We still have a small daffodil flowering at the back of the house but they are all finished elsewhere. 

Whitsuntide was quite a thing when I was a child. There were bigger than usual congregations in churches and chapels. Children skipped there instead of obediently walking beside their parents and grandparents. By the time Whitsun was celebrated, a sense of summer freedom was everywhere. It had been bubbling up all May and finally little and large hearts felt fit to burst with it all! Tractors with trailers, sometimes small lorries,  carried Sunday school children around the villages, singing their Christian songs as they went. 

Back at the beginning of the month, the weather was unpredictable, and there was a resulting hint of caution. Yet all the time we are waiting for a commitment to summer, the warblers have been arriving and settling in around us, the cuckoo has been leaving her terrible gifts in other birds' nests, otters are giving birth and pine marten babies are being fed very close by - what was that noise in the roof last night?

So much to do in May! Celery to plant, potatoes to set, marrows and pumpkins to plant, sweet pea plants to put into the garden for flowering this year, hollyhock plants to put into the garden for flowering next year and multiple mowings of grass needed .  In the garden it becomes apparent over the month of May that one mowing per week might not be enough! It was sufficient at the beginning but, at the end, a little more dedication is required! We have areas which we don't mow of course - very important to observe "No Mow May" in some parts of the garden - and we are rewarded amply by the amazing variety of insects. I can't name them all - there are hundreds of them.

Over the course of the month the birds have become more frantic in their search for food to feed their babies. At the beginning it was mostly nesting materials they were taking, now, at the end, they are cramming their tiny beaks full of caterpillars. It's a good job we have plenty for them. It isn't just the feeding which fascinates me - it's the speed at which they do it. Last week I watched, over just a few minutes, blackbirds, great tits and blue tits literally whizzing backwards and forwards to their respective nests. If I blinked I would miss one round of feeding! Absolutely manic!

The swallows seem to like us a lot this year!  At the beginning of the month they were feeding in the lane and over the fields and visiting us some of the time. Now they are here constantly and seem to be settled with us. I've instructed everyone to be on the lookout for a nest. We think there may be martins too. When our son was born, in May 1977, we had martins nesting on the gable of our house in Crowle in Lincolnshire. The gable end faced a meeting of streets and the birds' antics delighted many people passing by. Of course we had the odd misery who told us that we could "use yon theer clawths prop to knock the beggar down". No thank you! Some things are worth a bit of inconvenience.

On the first day of May this year, while the lady smock was popping up here and there on our dog walk, a pair of tree pipits danced over from the wood by the old mill. I've never knowingly seen them before - had to triple check when we arrived home. I love that I still keep finding new things - it's a constant source of joy for me. 

Clemency planted wild garlic at the bottom of the orchard and at the beginning of this month the flowers were making quite a show. I remember Burton Woods in Lincolnshire having a strong smell of ransomes in springtime. Always think of there when someone says "wild garlic". Those who find onions and garlic difficult to digest may find the leaves of wild garlic are a good substitute.

May 8th was the day when I could almost see things grow. At bedtime the temperature stayed at 12c. It was damp and perfect growing weather. I think I saw the leaves on the trees growing in front of my eyes! The Swedish Whitebeam particularly - and now, at the end of the month, the blossom is about to open up. 

But back to 8th May  - that was the day when the bluebells - pink bells too - really started to ring - and I noticed that the bulk of my wildflower seeds had germinated. Still a few to come but I can be patient.

In the middle of the month we saw two old friends return - the wren and the coal tit. They had been absent for a short time but they're back with us now. During this month we have been overwhelmed by the things we have seen and heard around us - fragrance too is a big thing in May. The clematis around the garage is delicious and the scent of it drifts into the front garden. 

A very peculiar thing happened on the way home late on the evening of 20th. Not to me - I was in bed! There were tens and tens of toads walking along the carriageway. It had been a wet day so I don't know if that brought them out late at night? 

Now we are at the end of the month and it's time to hang the marsh marigolds, upside down, in the doorway. Why? Well, witches are preparing for the summer solstice in June, and the marsh marigolds are too much for them - just too golden like the sun! I won't be hanging anything so beautiful upside down! I'll be soaking in their sunshine every time I go down to the pond or walk along the ditch side. That's where they belong - and right now, in May, I belong out of doors too.

Swallows - watching me watching them

Silent tree, by restraining valour

With patience, you revealed creative

Power in its peaceful form. And we come

To your shade to learn the art of peace,

And to hear the word of silence. 

Rabindranath Tagore

Update on the berries