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Winning Streak

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  I could not resist. I walked past and there it was on the pavement outside the shop. I know it is the wrong time. I know that I do not really need it and I know that a fruit tree outside a supermarket will have been having to tolerate extremes of temperature. It was the last one, so it had been rejected by lots of other customers. But I bought it, despite all the danger warnings in my head. Was it because I felt sorry for it being left on the shelf (literally)? Was it because of the attractive presentation and flashy label? Was it because it was cheap? No, I think because it was a ‘chancer’. I remember that my father who was a farmer used to buy animals that no one else wanted in the market. They were in the ‘bargain basement’ so to speak. He could afford to buy the fit animals, but he could not resist the challenge of a ‘chancer’. He sometimes used to buy a ewe cheaply because it had not ‘taken’ with the tup that year and did not have a lamb. But he was nearly always lucky a...
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Real life

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  “What are these little brown birds?” She asked. “Sand martins, like house martins but smaller and browner, all the way from Africa,” I told her. “Well, I did not know that! You learn something every day.” The sand martins were circling overhead in little darting flocks. If you stood still near the crumbling clay cliffs the birds disappeared like a magic trick, but when you stood back, there they were crowding the cliff face. This year their tunnel nests have gone. I sat at the foot of the cliff to rest but the whole slope moved as if there was an avalanche at my back. The cliff is eroding fast and over the winter it has taken the carefully excavated tunnels of the martins from last year. They did not seem to mind though and did their job all over again with excited shrieks helping each other like miners at a coal face. You see sand martins, if you are lucky, before any of the other swallow family, they are our earliest summer visitor. There are few birds in our new ga...
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Wild life worries

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  It has happened again. “Road closed,” it said. But this time it was not for road works or filling potholes. It is for the toads. At this time of year toads are on the move, walking en masse to their breeding grounds and it just so happens that I came to a road that crosses a path on their migration route. The road has been closed temporarily for about six weeks so that these amphibians can cross in safety. This is an official ‘toad crossing’ without the zebra markings. More than a thousand will use it in these next few weeks. You would think that our new garden was an official crossing for birds. We have a bird table which we have hung with all sorts of treats, peanuts, fat balls and mixed seeds. Added to that I offer titbits from the kitchen like breadcrumbs and cheese morsels. But the blue tits and other little birds turn up their beaks and fly over to the other houses. Is their bird table smarter than ours? Or is their food more delicious than mine? Whatever the reason t...
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Trying to connect you

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  I cannot remember when I last used one.   And yet when I was growing up and well into my working life, they were an essential part of living. We huddled together giggling as we phoned boyfriends, with coins at the ready set out on the little shelf then hastily putting more in when the pips went. We pressed button A to get the money to fall into the collecting box or button B to get our money back. Then another time we stood waiting in a queue willing the person in the box to hurry up as it was cold outside. They turned their back on the line of people waiting. Phone calls used to be something very special and occasional, now we take it for granted that we can speak any time day or night, and we do. In Shropshire there are over sixty boxes which could be removed. Some have not been used in over a year. I wonder if villages and towns will adopt them. They have been part of our traditional landscape for so long that some are listed ‘buildings’ and must stay. I have seen som...
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Things are moving

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  They are unfurling fast as if they must hurry and there is no time at all to lose. The tiny buds have swollen already. Then miniature leaves have started to pull out. It is surely too soon, does nature know what it is doing? It must do, I tell myself it is March after all and we are well into meteorological spring. Even so just to be on the safe side I cover my plant at night when the temperature drops below zero. It stands there like a shivering ghost with its arms outspread daring the frost to come near. It is a tree peony and I have had it for some years but it did not do very well and so Mr T dug it up and put it in a pot where it withered even more. Now we have planted it out again and it is covered in the red sycamore-like buds from head to toe. I am holding my breath and hoping for the best. I did the same for my little nest box. Held my breath, I mean, hoping that a bird would use it. I bought it at a little family garden centre. It looks home-made and is a hollowed o...
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Throwing away

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What should I throw away?  I have a rule, anything I have not used in the last year must go. That works quite well for clothes unless they are for funerals or special occasions. But what about my mother’s Ottoman and an old family treadle Singer sewing machine? I remember my mother getting her Ottoman from a shop in Hull. It was made by blind people, my mother used to collect stamps (rather like Green Shield Stamps) from volunteers who came to the house and when she had enough, I drove her to ‘The Blind Shop’ in Hull to see what to get. She chose this Ottoman made of basket weave with a foam covered top. It looks very old-fashioned and out of place now, but I haven’t the heart to get rid of it. It is also very useful for storing bedding. My black and gold sewing machine looks like an ancient relic, but it still works and not so long ago I made some kitchen curtains using it.  It is very ‘green’ for these modern times as it does not use electricity or any form of fuel excep...
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No control

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  “To beaver or not to b…”   Brian in the Archers is against beavers and says that they are an absolute menace. He has a friend who had a damaged fence caused by beavers. They are smart and strong, and tunnel into riverbanks and fields can get waterlogged, he emphasised that it is lunacy to introduce them. There are reasons for and against. We still do not know who will win the argument. Did you know that beavers are native and were here 400 years ago and can create an environment where wildlife can survive? Are they natures engineers who can manage water or are they a menace? Shropshire Council and Shropshire Wildlife Trust have made their decision and released two beavers from Scotland to an enclosure in the riverbed in Shrewsbury, hopefully to control the scrub growing rapidly there. I would love to see a beaver, but I do not think that will happen because they do not come out when we want them to, we have no control of that. “You should have seen me twenty years ag...
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