MAY - "All my hurts, My garden spade can heal" (Ralph Waldo Emerson)...

... and also from Waldo Emerson:

"Earth laughs in flowers"

WHITE AND BLUE JACOB'S LADDER

"We'll walk right after breakfast!"

It was bright but breezy at that point. I finished my breakfast and went into the pantry for something. The window faces west - and there it was - a great bank of grey cloud! The windmills were facing west so that was where the weather was coming from. We negotiated the after-breakfast-walk. Maybe we should wait? Then the wind picked up even more and brought the rain. Okay, we'll wait!

THE HAAR OVER THE WINDFARM

Such a pity the weather has turned and yet we really needed the rain. The first showers came over the weekend and the plants, trees and flowers, the salads and the vegetables, all seemed to shudder with the thrill of it. They were desperate. No amount of watering, from a can or a hose, is able to give the crops and gardens what they regularly need from the skies. Over the following days we had more and more rain - usually in short, sharp showers.

DUNCANSBY STACKS TAKEN ON EUAN'S BIRTHDAY OUTING MAY 10th

Overnight on Sunday/Monday, we had heavier rain and some damage to the more fragile plants. But the day dawned sunny. One of our neighbours was shouting at me to get out of bed. The best kind of alarm clock. This particular neighbour has four legs, a swishy tail and an udder. It was 5:30am and reading 5 degrees on the little weather machine. That morning's dog-walk was lovely and we were just saying what a peaceful, gentle walk it was when a male roe deer stood in front of us - not exactly up-close and personal but not so very far up the lane from us at all. 

"Good morning!" He didn't respond. Didn't move in fact - for a short time at least. Then he clocked the dogs - they're always on extendable leads - and started to run unconvincingly up the lane. He didn't run in a straight line, he ran in a zigzag pattern. At that point he must have realised that it would be wise to put some distance between the might-be-friendly dogs and himself so he made to go through the open gate into the field. He stopped. "If I can get through here so easily then so can they." He jumped the wire fence instead - next to the open gate!!! And then he bounced kangaroo-like, with his white showy tail bouncing after him. Well of course he was far more graceful than a kangaroo but his leaps through the long grass gave that impression. He was soon out of sight. Poor Ginny - she didn't want me to take one of the dogs in case they pulled me over in their enthusiasm to make a new friend. Instead she had to hold on to them both together. It wasn't easy - to watch!!!!!!

The animals who live around us seem to want to get to know us better but there's always a point when their suspicions get in the way of them trusting us. Yesterday a brown hare came towards us in the triangle field - but then decided not to introduce himself.

The Queen Anne's Lace and the flowering silverweed, however, made up for the disappointment. The Queen Anne's Lace is later this year. I think it may have waited for the rain.

QUEEN ANNE'S LACE LINING THE LANE

Our walks are wonderful - we often use the same route - but it's a little bit different every day - that is, we notice different things. Today one of the memorable images is that of the meadows and green crops being massaged by the wind - the pattern of movement is hypnotic. I can't photograph that for you but I can tell you how, as the leaves are moved, the sun catches them and highlights the underbelly of the fresh green growth so that it appears as an ocean moving with the tidal flow. 

AN OPPORTUNISTIC SWALLOW

Sometimes we don't even need to leave the house to feel that bond with the natural world. Last year we saw a pair of short eared owls regularly through spring and summer and we were sure they were nesting close by. On Sunday, I was enjoying my morning cuppa indoors at the kitchen table - and woe betide anyone who interrupts my quiet minutes! - when I noticed a bird sitting on the pole which is situated between the kitchen garden and the cottage garden. At first I wasn't able to identify it. It had an owlish look to it but I wasn't convinced. When the others woke up I shared this with them and it was suggested that it may have been a short eared owl. I had said the size was something between a wood pigeon and a collared dove - turns out that's about right. Also, what I was seeing was the paler part of the bird as it sat squat against the sky - not the heavy barring noticeable in flight. So our short eared owls have not abandoned us!!!

LABURNUM, LOOKING TOWARDS THE LITTLE WOOD

Before the weather changed and when the outside was an extension of the inside, I sat in the garden for a few minutes each early-morning. Lydia had recommended I install "Merlin", the bird app, on my phone. I took my phone out with me on several occasions and was very excited to find out just what I had been hearing in the garden. I recognise the obvious ones but some - many in fact - were beyond me! I never heard the cuckoo while I was using the app - nor the woodpecker. Sometimes I have jotted down the birds which come up on the screen - so, over this month, this is a list of my jottings -

robin, blackbird, common gull, goldcrest, chaffinch, house sparrow, song thrush, swallow, wren, goldfinch, starling, wood pigeon, willow warbler, skylark, curlew, blue tit, spotted flycatcher, jackdaw, carrion crow, meadow pipit, great tit, hooded crow, pheasant, greenfinch, siskin and coal tit. 

Not too bad for the far north!!! And these were all recorded from our garden from Monday, 12th May to Wednesday 28th May. Sometimes I was sitting in the front garden and sometimes in the little cottage garden. 

I can recommend "Merlin" if you're as unsure about the different bird songs as I am.

SPOT THE DOG BEHIND THE POND

In May 1895, George North, in Lincolnshire, was "sowing tillage for tates in warps" and "sowing tillage for mangolds in warps". He was also "sowing salt". I can only assume that "sowing salt" was intended to kill weeds. I have experience of using salt in the garden - and it's a bit sad really! When we lived in Lincolnshire, after having struggled to grow a garden in Orkney, I created a little oasis at the back of our cottage. However, I was having problems with slugs. I tried all sorts of remedies that were suggested to me. Nothing seemed to work! My Auntie Wendy said that some people use salt around their plants. Apparently the slugs can't move across salt. Being me, and not doing things by halves, I put large quantities of salt around the plants I was the most worried about. Close up. Bad idea! You've guessed the rest!

TRYING MY HAND AT TOPIARY - NO FEEDBACK PLEASE!!!!

I never use pellets or any other chemicals in the garden so I am still battling with slugs five hundred miles and twenty years away. This year I tried coffee grounds. It's difficult to say if they have worked because this has been the driest spring I can remember in Scotland. The slugs became depleted in number as soon as the dry spell began - and that was about the same time I did experiments with coffee grounds.

KEITH'S TOMATOES, OKAY - I MAY HAVE BULLIED HIM A LITTLE INTO GROWING THEM!

Back to "sowing tillage for tates and mangolds" - guessing I don't need to write this but just making it clear that sowing in tillage is sowing without the deepest ploughing. The soil is well broken however and a good crop can be harvested but eventually deeper ploughing will be necessary. When I was a little girl, I used to think tillage was something that was put onto the field because, when my dad pointed it out as the sowing was going on in the fields, there was always a lot of accompanying dustiness. It seemed to me that it was something that was being applied. It makes sense that it would be dusty when you think that the soil has been made fine by the preparation process.

"Tates" of course are potatoes - "tatties" here in Caithness. 

One of my lasting farming memories of autumn in my native Lincolnshire is the sight of trailers brimming over with mangolds being carted away for winter storage and ultimately for use as cattle food. Their strong orange/yellow shades made them striking on a dull autumn day. They are in the family of beets and have a particularly hefty root.

FAMILY AND FRIENDS FROM LINCS MAY RECOGNISE THE NON-FLOWERING PART OF THIS DISPLAY!

I sowed the purslane seeds on the third of this month. They didn't all germinate but I'm optimistic for the ones which already have. Purslane is a much-loved foraged ingredient in Palestinian cookery. 

" . . .it's the foodstuff that reminds me most of our land. Many refugees who had to flee from their homes in 1948 survived on this weed, because it grew wild everywhere and still does. It kept them alive as they were on their journey of exile so . . . .it has a special and poignant significance"

(Sally Azzam, a co-ordinator of the LIWAN, an arts and cultural centre in the Old City in Nazareth - taken from "Zaitoun" by Yasmin Khan)

And that's why I'm growing it! In solidarity with the Palestinian people.

PURSLANE SEEDLINGS

May is one of my two favourite months of the natural year - the other being October. I love something about all of the months - even dull November when those leaves are "whirling fast". But May is so packed with hope that it almost takes my breath away. Everywhere I look there are tangible signs of hope. Green shoots, green buds, green trees, every other colour you can think of all around, baby hares, parent birds feeding their hungry offspring... the list is, as they say, endless. Endless into Hope. Through the misty beginnings to some of the mornings, towards the lingering evening light in the western sky - still too light for the chickens to be put to bed - when the clock says it's bedtime but the world thinks otherwise. 

APPLE BLOSSOM

THINK THIS MAY BE A DAMSEL FLY, TAKEN ON AN APPLE TREE

After the wind and the rain, I walk around the garden and wince at the damage - the beautiful new growth at the top of the mahonia has broken off, the uncertain little sunflower plants, started from seed by Judith, are keeling over, the flattened Spanish Lady poppies are smothering their smaller neighbours. This makes me sad and yet there is still the knowledge that, very soon, things will come back and have another try - not just for me but because they belong to something much bigger. 

If I lived in a property without a garden, I would have to grow things indoors or on an outside window ledge. Growing things is essential to life - to me! One of my favourite writers is Elizabeth Von Armin. The first book of hers that I ever read was "Elizabeth and Her German Garden", published in 1898. It's full of delicious little bits like this:

"If only I could dig and plant myself! ... I did one warm Sunday in last year's April during the servants' dinner hour... slink out with a spade and a rake and feverishly dig a little piece of ground and break it up and sow surreptitious ipomaea (Morning Glory) and run back very hot and guilty into the house and get into a chair and behind a book and look languid just in time to save my reputation."

A few days ago Keith watched a family of sparrows on the garden seat - the parents were feeding the babies and the little ones who weren't being fed at that point were playing in and out of the spokes on the arms of the chair. Since then I've seen them feeding their demanding families too. One of the joys of springtime.

WISH YOU COULD SMELL THE CLEMATIS ON THE GARAGE - HEAVENLY!

My mother, who will be 94 next month, remembers a May Pole and May Pole dancing when she was little. She grew up in Haxey and Belton - both in the Isle of Axholme. I remember one of the schools I worked in trying the May Pole dancing. Such larks!!!! 

When I was young there was a fair that came to Epworth in May - in September too as I remember - and that seemed to mark a different way of thinking - the May fair seemed to denote fun, frivolity and fine weather ahead. 

By May, we were even having PE lessons out of doors! Life was easier. People smiled more. The indoors went outdoors, vegetables were prepared from a chair in the garden and washing came in from the line ready to iron. The world had opened up ahead of summer - and I loved it. Still do! 

My cucumber plants both died - but Clemency's are taking over the world - hooray for cucumbers!!! And springtime.

MR. TOAD WELCOMING YOU

"Our connection to nature grounds us, it makes us more spiritually aware. We must keep the legacy of nature materially alive for future generations."

(Nelly Furtado, Canadian singer-songwriter, for the Woodland Trust "Tree for All" campaign)

CANDLES ON THE HORSE CHESTNUT