Notes from the country with Vicky Turrell

  I stood next to her in the supermarket as she was tapping away on her mobile. Nothing unusual about that, but she kept going to the plant stall nearby, checking the labels and then returning. “I am reading up about these plants,” she said, “I want to know all about them before I buy”. We are looking on our house plants differently these days. We are treating them almost like pets. I am certainly very fond of ours. You see, they were my companions in lockdown and they are still with me today. They kept me company through those long days. I noticed every leaf and every blemish. They were treated like royalty. We liked them so much that we took cuttings of them and now all these years later I feel so attached to them that our garden-room is in danger of being overrun by a jungle of leaves. Another strange thing happened to me in a different supermarket this week. We went up north to a Yorkshire family gathering. The extreme heatwave does not seem to have reached that far and t...

  I am free. Now I can go where I want, when I want. They have finished and there is not a pothole in sight. All last month our roads have been closed on weekdays until the evenings. It has made for some very interesting driving. I followed the big yellow diversion signs until they seemed to peter out or got mixed up with some other road works. But it is not all bad I discovered some little Welsh villages that I had not seen before they seemed a long way out but at least the road was not closed. I got used to driving at 20mph going safely past houses and schools with beautiful countryside. I got used to exploring our county’s countryside too, far away from the roadworks. On a hot sunny day, we set off to see the blue butterfly fields in north Shropshire’s special heath land. It is the only place you can find the silver studied blue butterfly in the Midlands. I hoped that we would be lucky. We met a serious looking man with a huge camera lens. “Go over to the right where the hea...

  It has gone at last. At least for the present time. I do not know about you, but I had to work out ways of managing the heat. When we lived in the cottage, we were quite cool indoors because the medlar tree shaded our sunroom in the morning and the old magnolia tree shaded the kitchen during the day. At mealtimes we sat under our quince tree, which had a canopy in the shape of a parasol. Here in the new house, we have no shade in the garden. Last autumn we planted some new silver birch trees. I kept them well watered in the spring but as the months wore on, I noticed that some did not come into leaf. What should we do? I watered them but, in the end, gave up and all that was left was the bare black skeleton. We would have to replant this coming autumn. But it meant a delay on getting shade. Trees take a while to be big enough to give shade. In town on the hottest day, I was very thankful of the established trees. These are the ones that have been spared by the council. What a...

  We have squatters. Last week the little house was empty and now there are occupants making a great deal of noise and fuss. I had hoped that the great-tits would come back for a second brood. We could see them all the way through the building of the nest to the feeding of their young. Only two weeks ago they were so busy, there was hardly any time between one parent leaving and the next one arriving with a caterpillar or fly. We did not see them fledge. One minute they were there and then they were not. The box was silent. All was deafeningly quiet until the male house sparrow arrived. ‘Look what I’ve found,’ he seemed to be shouting. And in no time at all a female had arrived and they were busily ‘decorating’ and doing all the things you do to make the house you have moved into comfortable. In our new house we have been busy getting our dining room sorted. I had worked hard to find chairs that were comfortable for me. At last, I found the perfect chairs and they are all I h...

  It has arrived at last. We have been waiting for nearly three months, but our new table is here. We had to ask the delivery people to move the old table into the garage for us., which they did and it stands there dejected amongst garden tools. Our new table is splendid; I have never had a new table in my life. Our farmhouse table was mahogany with huge carved legs and two ‘leaves’ that you could put in if a lot of people came for dinner. You had to crank a winding handle at the side and turn to expose a big gap in the middle. This where we played table tennis, where my mother ironed our clothes with a hot flat iron from the coal fire and where my cousin had her tonsils out with the local doctor operating. When they moved to their retirement bungalow they bought a drop-leaf second-hand table from a sale room. Mr T had a table he rescued from a chicken shed and I had an ancient writing table from an ‘emporium’. So, this is my first new table after 81 years. We are still waiting...

  Is that robin or a red kite? A recent survey found that many people struggle to know the difference. Even the blue tit was apparently hard for some people to recognise. Is it because we are too busy or do we see most of our wildlife on screen? It was hard to recognise the robin yesterday when walking by the canal a red and brown ball dropped from the tree. If it was autumn, I would have thought that it was a ripe apple falling. Then the loud chirping started and the ball began to jerk as I realised it was two robins in combat. They rolled along the towpath until finally giving up and flying off in separate directions. I nearly gave up on our delivery of a compost bin I ordered online this week. They indicated the delivery time as 8am to 8pm. I tracked it on the link. Any minute now it would arrive. The line showing progress on the ‘Out for delivery’ page was nearly at our house. We waited in the front room so we could easily see and hear the van. But no van came and soon my p...