MARCH - "I lived in the first century of world wars..."

 I lived in the first century of world wars.
Most mornings I would be more or less insane,
The newspapers would arrive with their careless stories,
The news would pour out of various devices
Interrupted by attempts to sell products to the unseen.
I would call my friends on other devices;
They would be more or less mad for similar reasons.
Slowly I would get to pen and paper,
Make my poems for others unseen and unborn.
In the day I would be reminded of those men and women,
Brave, setting up signals across vast distances,
Considering a nameless way of living, of almost unimagined values.
As the lights darkened, as the lights of night brightened,
We would try to imagine them, try to find each other,
To construct peace, to make love, to reconcile
Waking with sleeping, ourselves with each other,
Ourselves with ourselves. We would try by any means
To reach the limits of ourselves, to reach beyond ourselves,
To let go the means, to wake.

I lived in the first century of these wars.

 Muriel Rukeyser, “Poem” from The Speed of Darkness. Copyright © 1968 by Muriel Rukeyser

A lovely shot by Judith

Saint David's Day, 1st March, and not a flowering daffodil in sight here at Stempster House. The day dawned cold, +1°C, but not as cold as the last day of February, clocking in at -1°C. 

Early on the first day of the month I watched the little birds playing their courtship games - I could only make out their silhouettes at that time so I was unable to positively identify them.  The day became dull and was spoiled further by a bitter wind.

It's been a windy month to be honest. When we have walked the dogs it has sometimes felt like an assault on us! The walk may have begun well but, as soon as we were walking into the wind, it became difficult and sometimes not at all pleasant.  Even when we had a stretch of lovely spring-like weather in the middle of the month the wind wasn't very far away. The birds continue with their courtship in spite of foul weather days. I wonder how any hatchlings will survive. 

"Yet, by Nature's inexorable process, the nests will be finished, the eggs laid in them. How is it, I wonder, that the wind pouring up through that loose mesh of twigs does not chill the eggs from below as fast as the parent bird warms them from above? No incubation process, man-devised, would have a chance under such conditions."

(from "A Suffolk Harvest" by Adrian Bell.)

I look at the lambkins in the fields and wonder how they cope with the vagaries of our weather in Britain - although I can't help but think that Spring is on its way when I see lambs being suckled by their mums in the green fields - and the larks ascending - thank you Vaughan Williams - simply add to that euphoric feeling of hope. 

Two spring skylarks larking about!

The early morning temperature here jumped to +8°C the next day and, with the full moon (the Lenten Moon or Plough Moon), promptly dropped below zero! 

It was a beautiful moon. I watched it late on the third and then again early the next day. Such a sense of peace in an otherwise disturbed and chaotic world.

A strange thing happened in the early morning of the full moon. Ginny was visited by a barn owl trying to get in through her bedroom window. She reached for her phone but of course it was gone in a flash! I think she'll have the image etched on her memory for a long time.

Daffies along the edge of the wood with a glimpse of the raised pond during construction

Work has been going on all through March - whenever time would allow -  to make Clemency's plan for a water garden really happen. Ginny and Judith have helped her. It is a lot of hard work and still ongoing as the frame for the raised pond has bowed slightly and requires buttressing. It is positioned in the part of the wood which has the beehive in it and there has been a lot of chopping back branches in order to let light through. The bees don't seem to mind at all. They made their debut on the seventh of March and seem very happy to have company as Ginny, Judith and Clemency beaver away in the Bee Queendom! We caught a nosey hedgehog on the trail camera and my imagination had the hedgehog - who remained by the beehive for a little while - asking the bees how they put up with all the industry going on!

Ginny's bees making their 2026 debut

Ginny took time out to examine the many stones which turned up there. She is really interested in the stones we find here as we are just across the corner from a broch. There have been some fascinating ones and advice has been sought on their relevance to the history of the place.

I'm interested in the stones too - of course I am - but one of the most beautiful aspects I saw while they were working on the water garden was where the branches of yew had been sawn. The pattern made by the rings left exposed on the remaining yew is a thing of wonder. There it was for years - tucked away inside the branch. Judith got to work in order to let light in from the north and there was this amazing artwork staring us in the face!

Heartwood of the yew

The flowering currant hedge on our hill is beginning to flower now. It is beautiful when it's fully out. Over and around the currant hedge the curlews are calling. I'm hoping they will nest nearby again.

Currant flowering on the hill

Clemency and I created a little book for children to teach them about the curlew. There have always been curlews where I have lived - I have a great affection for them.

Sir Louis Curlewy

There have been a very few warmer, sunny days this month and, on one of those, Judith spotted an early tortoiseshell butterfly. The tortoiseshells emerge from their hibernation in early springtime - late March/early April - so this was a particularly eager little specimen for the far north.

When I read Wordsworth's "To a Butterfly" I'm transported back in time to childhood. I grew up in rural Lincolnshire, in the Isle of Axholme, and, before the heavy use of pesticides and herbicides, we were surrounded by a treasure of natural riches. Butterflies were up there near the top of my treasure list!

STAY near me—-do not take thy flight!
A little longer stay in sight!
Much converse do I find I thee,
Historian of my infancy !
Float near me; do not yet depart!
Dead times revive in thee:
Thou bring'st, gay creature as thou art!
A solemn image to my heart,
My father's family! 

Oh! pleasant, pleasant were the days,
The time, when, in our childish plays,
My sister Emmeline and I
Together chased the butterfly!
A very hunter did I rush
Upon the prey:—-with leaps and spring
I followed on from brake to bush;
But she, God love her, feared to brush
The dust from off its wings.

("To a Butterfly" by William Wordsworth)

Last year I spotted a peregrine falcon. There was much excitement! And this year the speedy robust bird of prey was spotted near the river by Ginny and Clemency on a weekend dog walk. Peregrines suffered a decline in World War Two when many were shot to protect carrier pigeons and then again ten years later due to organochlorine poisoning. Cyclodienes are used as seed dressings and are much more directly toxic than DDT. Both are organochlorines. It really is a terrible death and thankfully education is improving our awareness in the twenty-first century. Compassion over profit is something we can only encourage through education. It isn't enough to say that toxins are cruel.  Details - although they are hard to bear - need to be made available. 

Well before the use of such chemicals - in March, 1896 - George North in North Lincolnshire was busy on Mr. Waterhouse's farm, not far from the River Trent, with plashing, thrashing and turning potatoes over. Plashing is the process whereby branches - both living and dead - are woven into a hedge in order to make an impenetrable fence.  The word thrashing was synonymous with threshing in the past but is rarely used nowadays in that way. Some days that month he was "thacking straw stacks" - thacking is a Northern English/Scottish variant of the word thatching. He would have used straw and/or reeds.  Farming life hadn't changed much when I was growing up . The massive changes came when this "Child of the Isle" was moving towards teenage years. The irony is that, while my father, my grandfather and my uncle thought the progress to be a positive thing, I mourned the loss of the old ways. Sufficient to say that I never plashed, thrashed or thacked!!!   I remember, with so much fondness, seeing the mad March hares in the fields in Epworth and Belton where I grew up. Many hedges had been removed by the time we moved back to Belton from Epworth. This meant that we could watch dust storms from our window. Of course this also meant soil erosion. Not good! But on the fields freshly swept by the dust storms the hares were very easy to spot. Later, bungalows were built there and so the hares had to find other fields for their Mad March Mating Mayhem!

Busy as a hare in March!

The hares are getting busy here. They may have been mating since January and will continue until September. They don't seem too afraid of us. On the twenty fifth of this month it was forty years since the first time I stood on Orcadian soil! We had four of our children then. Ginny was a baby. Lydia was toddling at my side and Alexander and Holly Rose were curious about their new school. Keith had been up to Orkney the previous autumn - so it wasn't his first time. The first person to speak to us when we drove off the ferry was a grumpy policeman who told us we couldn't park even though we were struggling to find the route to the new home supplied to us by the council. Keith had taken up the post of Maths teacher at Stromness Academy and so we were able to have a council house until we could buy a home. On the journey north we stayed overnight, once in Blair Atholl - a place familiar to us - and again in Thurso ahead of making the crossing over the Pentland Firth the next day. While we were eating breakfast in Blair Atholl we were entertained by pairs of hares boxing across the road from us. This was particularly picturesque because there had been quite a lot of snow overnight and, behind the tableau of boxing hares, stood the pretty little Kilmaveonaig Church. 

We forgave the grumpy policeman and began ten happy years in Orkney where our two younger daughters were born. Politically, it was a testing time in Britain and we found Orkney to be a wholesome place in which to have children. We were hopeful.

The sitka corner of Toad Hall

Our hares at Stempster seem just as chilled as those in rural Perthshire forty years ago. There is something magical about the way hares interact.

The owls have been ever-present this month - calling from the old sycamore and the horse chestnut  and sometimes from within the wood too. The ones we hear mostly are the tawny owls - the traditional tu-whit, tu-whoo sound. We do sometimes hear the screeching barn owls but we see them more often than we hear them - silver ghosts gliding across our line of vision or settled on a fencepost at a safe distance.

One night, about a week ago, Ginny heard the tawny owls calling, then a car driving slowly, then a screech - and then nothing. There was no sign of a killing the next morning but I found an absolutely definite fox dropping underneath the horse chestnut. It's difficult to work out exactly what happened. I wondered if a fox had escaped over the wall into our garden to get away from the car and, in doing so, had alarmed the owls. He has left his signs in the garden before so this must be familiar territory to him. 

By the time Mothers' Day came round on the fifteenth, we had enough daffodils to make up a lovely vase for the table. Today, the twenty eighth, they are lining the edge of the wood on the roadside. This year, more than ever before, I have noticed the lovely scent they give. It's almost a spicy smell - but much more subtle. 

"Legend relates that Persephone, wreathed in white daffodils, was captured by Pluto, whose touch turned the flowers yellow."

(from "The Folklore of Plants" by Margaret Baker) 

Several rays of sunshine (daffydowndilies)

Another March flower is the blackthorn. It grew by the disused railway in Epworth and on "Hilltop" near my home in Belton (Belshaw Lane, Carrhouse). It grew in our garden when we lived in Barrow on Humber and we planted some as part of the "Useful Hedge" here at Stempster. Unfortunately it didn't do well here. We might have another go! However, on a journey down to Culbokie last week, we noticed some beautiful specimens along parts of the roadside. The blossom is delightfully dainty and, to be truthful, you still get that sense of delicateness at a distance.

It's almost five years since we came to look around Stempster House. After the initial shock - realising it had been empty for a long time and would need a lot of attention in the first instance to bring it up to living standard - think mouse droppings at every step! - and then a lot more attention in line with the home report - we all fell head over heels for it. Even Keith - who isn't one to get too excited about these things - was bowled over! On that day I dreamed of walking in the garden and surrounding countryside and being accepted by all the creatures who already called this little corner of the world their home. I didn't really think it would happen - told myself I was silly enough to pretend I was living a fairy tale. And yet, recently, we have found that the birds are more confident around us - taking food from close by. The deer will continue grazing when we walk past them - not up close and personal but relatively near. The frogs and toads were never afraid - nor were the butterflies - but the mustelids are not so secretive as they were. The weasel and the stoat are often around and within sight. The pine marten is noisy and messy in the dark. The badger leaves scratched mossy earth to message that he's been visiting. And once he left holes where potatoes had been planted. And the fox!! Well he's the pits!!! He commits all sorts of abuses on our hospitality! Actually, truthfully, we have respect for one another!  The hares tease us as we drive on the hill - "So you're in a rush are you?" "Want to get home for your tea do you?" "Late for work?" They know well that we will never knowingly run them over. They are also a bit silly and dart out in front of us sometimes. I wish they wouldn't. It's only a matter of time before there's a tragic hare-related accident. There has been one on the hill earlier this year. It wasn't us - this time - but it's easy to see how these things can happen.   

How many deer can you see?

The mice and voles think they own the place. They are welcome in their family groups - but outside please. Humane traps keep the house mouse-free and voles are only likely to come indoors by mistake. We very rarely see rats or their droppings.

But high in the (sometimes) blue, new to us, large and noisy sky monsters, unknown and terrifying, scream out their presence to foe and friend alike. They're made for our defence but frighten us rather than reassure us. Here, in this uncomplicated corner of the world, we are reminded of the potential for conflict and of those who already suffer as nation after nation becomes entangled in the political machinations of corrupt world leaders following their own agendas regardless of the loss of innocent lives and the further degradation of this wonderful world. The introductory poem to this blog was written by someone who could not accept a new threat of conflict without doing what she could, with like-minded people, to make others aware. We may not be able to stop the killing of people and the destruction of the planet but we can do everything in our power to make this a better world. You've heard me banging on before about me not buying goods from Israel. In fact I have never bought anything from Israel because all my adult life I have been aware of the terrible suffering imposed by them on the Palestinian people. Israel's spree of destruction is now running amok in the Middle East.

Leaf skeleton - perhaps aspen

The sweet celandines were fully open when the sun shone. They seemed to thrill with the warmth of the March sunshine. Then the threatening clouds returned. They closed their petals against the wind and the rain - as a mother wraps her arms around her infants when she hears the sirens of war.

Nature touches us in so many ways and in so many ways brings us hope. The calm celandine sits out the storm in her own way - and in her way we can immerse ourselves in the beauty of the creation.  That we are able to do this is a gift. The closing poem is a personal favourite:

When I consider how my light is spent,

   Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,

   And that one Talent which is death to hide

   Lodged with me useless, though my Soul more bent

To serve therewith my Maker, and present

   My true account, lest he returning chide;

   “Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?”

   I fondly ask. But patience, to prevent

That murmur, soon replies, “God doth not need

   Either man’s work or his own gifts; who best

   Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state

Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed

   And post o’er Land and Ocean without rest:

   They also serve who only stand and wait.”

John Milton, "On His Blindness"