APRIL - "These landscapes are being shaped by many people and many ideas as they always have been..."

"These landscapes are being shaped by many people and many ideas as they always have been. Still, through all of this runs a thread of continuity with everything that has come before, as most of the hefted flocks of sheep still follow the same movements between fell and pasture they have always done." 

James Rebanks, "English Pastoral, An Inheritance" 2020 

Flowering Currant hedge

It seems that long grass, left unmown, encourages butterflies. This statement comes as a result of a survey covering 600 gardens in Britain - and at a time when swallowtails are known to be at risk. Quite some time ago, we perhaps had an inkling that long grass supported more insect life than scalped lawns but the marvellous thing about the survey is that it gives every type of gardener the opportunity to help wildlife on these islands. Those of us who are the "live and let live" gardeners feel justified in our not very detailed plans and our sketchily drawn-up schemes. Those who like manicured gardens with lots of bare earth will acknowledge that their plot, however small, will be enriched by the addition of a measured strip of unruly grass. Give room to the insects, then you'll have birds. The birds will thrive on the peskier insects which would otherwise damage your plants. Good job well done!! You'll have your show-standard blooms without the need for insecticides!

Sparrow house below home for Great Tits (old post box)

We have been amazed at the number and variety of butterflies we see here at Stempster. Already this year, we have seen peacocks and speckled woods dancing alongside us as we walked the dogs on sunny mornings.

We don't need to introduce an area of long grass here - there are pockets of it everywhere! We've found those pockets are full of goodies - all manner of mini-beasts. 

Peacock butterfly

April has many surprises - early butterflies being one. One day last week, the weather was a rollercoaster of bombshells. The sun had the coats off our backs before hiding behind clouds and allowing cooler temperatures to return. Looking outside at lunchtime we saw hailstones on the window before the rain appeared to have snow in it. At one point, when the rain was coming in, the cloud was so low that it shrouded the near distance in mist. There have been rainbows too.

A double rainbow for April showers

Every time I look out of a window I see busy birds to-ing and fro-ing, sometimes with full beaks, sometimes with urgent calls. This is the time of year which grounds us well in the very fabric of things. This year, last year, next year, the story will be the same - new life in abundance! Reading an April entry from an old journal written when we lived in North Lincolnshire, I found that I could have been writing about our garden here in the far north of Scotland today -

"The garden is just so very lovely right now. Wet though! The planning and clearing and hard work are giving the wildlife what it needs. We have a proper little ecosystem here! The goldfinches spend time in full view as Holly and I watch from the kitchen window. A wren appears to be building in the clematis by Dumpling's hutch. It flies backwards and forwards  between the clematis and the roof of the shed.

A pair of blue tits are now building in the nesting box by the archway. I watched one very early this morning with a huge twiggy thing which it couldn't get into the hole - so it balanced on the perch and juggled with the twiggy thing until it went in. Another time, the blue tit went charging into the hole with a long piece of something and dropped it, going inside the box without it. It looked so comical as its little head poked out looking all around as if trying to locate the nesting material!! . . . . . . . . .  This morning I saw a large bird take off from the big pond - followed by another and then recognised them as male and female mallards. Ginny and Clemmy are concerned that the ducks will eat the tadpoles but I have explained that this is part of our ecosystem at Hope Cottage. There are thousands of tadpoles, if they all became frogs, we wouldn't be able to walk outside!"

Bee house now home to the Blue Tit Family

Okay, so the tadpole thing might be a bit of wishful thinking here at Stempster but I'm certain we'll get some - next year! Manyana!

Going back even further to April, 1896, in the Trentside villages of North Lincolnshire, my George North diary tells me that this month was a busy time for "getting swedes up" and for "drilling barley". It also told me that George was "washing carrots" twice that month. This is significant for me as my father started out in business with Walter Law on Church Street, Epworth, in the early 1960s - washing carrots. I thought it was something quite new - to sell washed carrots - as we'd always had them "wi' muck on 'em" before that. Dad went solo and washed and packed potatoes too - as well as buying crops of peas and beans from local farmers and getting them to the markets in summer. By this time he was a "Farm Produce Merchant" and we had moved, as a family, from a cottage, "Studcross Cottage", at the edge of Battlegreen in Epworth, to a larger house, "Aston House", 92, High Street, Epworth. Quite recently I discovered that Percy Lindley, who owned and lived in the house in 1939, was also a farm produce merchant - and my second cousin three times removed - on my mother's Emerson side. Isn't technology grand!!! Would never have discovered this family trivia without the internet! My parents bought Aston House from Percy's son, Brian, and his wife, Kathleen.

There have been so many changes since Dad died in 1986. Technology is responsible for many. The environment is often the worst for it - but technology can also be put into action to repair the damage we've done. 

Although the world bears the scars, it also has a deep and ebullient energy to regenerate. We see it every springtime. My garden/nature diary of April 2024 is not unlike the journals I've been scribbling in for decades. Scribbling is what I do - because I get so excited at spotting things in the garden and the countryside that I can't write neatly when I record these things! Here's just one of this year's April entries -

"Bullfinch on the Swedish Whitebeam.

2 cows are out at our farm

each with their calves

one a tiny black one

deer grazing across the road

pheasants on the cabin roof

wood pigeons mating"

Bullfinch

This was scribbled on Saturday 20th. "Our farm" is not our farm at all - it is the farm next to us - run by the Sutherland family. There are more cows out now. They are not all out just yet as they could be heard in the byre yesterday - but soon they will be. I get so much pleasure from watching them. Ginny caught some sheep with a lamb, on the trail camera, the other day - and also some cows. They had all made a bid for freedom - but decided they were probably better off where they had been previously because they didn't hang around!

I haven't spotted the swallows yet - or the bats who share Stempster House all year round, sleeping in our attic in wintertime. I read that swallows are back in the east of England but we have had nothing to suggest they are back in the far north of Scotland. I haven't seen the bats come out of their winter snooze yet either. These two things probably indicate we have a limited number of insects at present. Creepy crawlies are emerging - but in their ones and twos rather than in their masses.

Habits change. The alterations we are witnessing in our weather patterns are bound to impact on migration and emergence from winter sleep. So it is that the bird map is changing too. We are having a greater variety of birds coming to the northern edge of Britain than was usual twenty years ago. The detractors of wind turbines should be assured that these shining white giants have little impact on the bird life here. Bird brains are not so small they can't work it out!

Flapping around at the bird feeder

Yesterday we had linnets in the garden - first time I've seen one here - although we had them in Belton when I was young. I love the sweetness of their twittering and their streaky brown plumage highlighted with flashes of bright red. They used to be scarce in the Highlands - although they have bred on Orkney for some time. I hope we can support their efforts to breed successfully here at Stempster.

I sowed the last of the wildflower seeds this week. I'm hoping for a longer flowering period by having sown them at intervals. Last year I sowed some, a bit late in the season,  along the back of the larger border in the little cottage garden - not in my usual wildflower bed - and they were not very successful there at all. This week I've noticed a band of tiny seedlings just where I sowed those seeds last year. So/sow hopeful!!

"Valentine" rhubarb surrounded by Nigella seeds

I have sown my purslane seeds. I am growing them for the first time this year as a part of my solidarity with the Palestinian people. Wild purslane has been a life-saver at times for the Palestinian people when they have been unable to find other food to nourish them - a bit like manna for the wandering tribes of Israel in the Bible stories. Doesn't take much working out does it? They all come from the same stock - so why this terrible killing spree? Abraham's Sarah had a lot to answer for! Jealousy? Who needs it!!! My purslane seeds haven't yet germinated but I'm assured that, if they do, there will be plenty of herbage. 

I was so pleased to see a wild primrose under a tree at the bottom of the garden. We have one or two non-wild ones which we have inherited and I have tried to explain the difference between those and a genuinely wild primrose. Now I have my example! The primrose wasn't there before so something we have done to that part of the garden has allowed it to peep out at us! It could be that seeds have lain dormant for a number of years until now. So delicate in structure and shades - the leaves and the flower. There were wild primroses growing on the banks of ditches - which we called dykes - when I was growing up. So many of them. I loved to find them in early springtime.  There was an empty old house in the fields behind our house, which was called Primrose Hill, where primroses grew along the dykes around it. I found out much later that we have a family connection with that house. My great grandmother, Louisa (nee Dimbleby) Temperton, had a niece, also named Louisa, but known in the family as Lily, who married Fred Widdowson. They lived in Primrose Hill with their son, also Fred. Fred Snr. died in the Great War. "The war to end all wars"!! Later, Lily married John Nicholson who served with Fred. Now, when I see wild primroses, I think of Lily and how her life was turned upside down - from pastoral beauty and familial happiness to tragedy - because of someone else's power struggle.

Welcome bed in its early stages

Clemency has been working on a "welcome bed" by the drive. She started it off with a hydrangea, a pyracantha, some aubretia and a dwarf willow. Yesterday Judith sowed sunflower seeds there. This morning Ginny sowed her seeds - given to her at Christmas to attract insects as she spends her spare time in summer photographing them. Keith put his tomato seeds into pots in the greenhouse too. We're all different and the differences enrich "Stempster House'' and the garden. When we came here three years ago, we took a leap of faith. We all wanted to live in the countryside with plenty of our own space around us for gardening and for keeping small livestock. This house and garden was just what we needed to fulfill the dream. Separately, we couldn't afford it. We all put our funds together - and here we are - soaking up the natural beauty of the far north! We work hard and the winters are sometimes a bit tough but we haven't regretted the decision to live together on equal terms and with balanced values.

Brown hare

The quail are settling in and, although they were Clemency's thing, we all enjoy their company. Ginny and I were equally delighted to watch the antics of the short-eared owl the other day and we were all excited to see the barn owl perched on a fence post one evening last week. Judith and Clemency saw six hares together at the beginning of the month.

Stempster Quail

Eating out of Judith's hand

But we share the sorrow too -

Poem written after seeing a dead hare Tuesday, 16th April

We walked in silence then.

Before,

we had chatted,

had laughed,

had loved

the April morning,

but then we saw it,

a beautiful creature,

half-eaten.

So then we walked in silence.