Another Country Diary #29
With oak apples
1/6
Along the verges of the lanes the grass is going to seed. The red campion is climbing ever higher to compete with the waist high grasses and cow parsley. We see some of the usual companions along the way. Two muntjac deer in the corner field. A pair of ravens with them. The deer are grazing the hedges. The ravens strut and peck. The day is warm, but cooler than yesterday. A strong breeze blows from the west. Cooling but not cold. The sky slowly clouds.
Along the top some of the tractor ruts in the track have water in them, or at least mud. The ground is less cracked. The rain last week did some good it seems. In the hedges the May blossom of hawthorn has given way to pink dog-roses, to pale fingers of honeysuckle, and to creamy heads of elderflower. Where the blackthorn flowered there are now great bunches of green sloes. Last autumn was terrible for sloes, but it looks like a bumper crop this year. We will be making gin.
When the footpath reaches the bottom fields, and we can see the next village, we turn back, but not before watching three red kites circuit the area before letting the tail wind carry them east. In the fields that have been set aside for wildlife there are great clumps of oxeye daisies. Ceci points out that the black knapweed is starting to flower. Soon there will be a sea of pink here. Along the path I identify hedge woundwort and sainforn using the brilliantly handy ‘Seek’ app. The woundwort, I read later, owes its name to its healing properties when made into a poultice or tea.
As we approach the village on the way back we spot swallows hunting over the lanes and the nearby fields. They flash back and forth, flying low, scything the air just inches above the grass and tarmac, jinking this way and that in search of their tiny airborne meal.
This time of year brings the misery of hay-fever. For me it is grass pollen that sets it off and despite taking a pill, my eyes are itching by the time we arrive back at the house.
2/6
A quick walk after work takes us along the bridleway up to the old brickyard woods. The big field is full of soft looking barley, like a sea of rolling seed heads. The woods feel like a haven as we enter, all shade and fecund growth. There is more birdsong than usual. Blackbirds. A robin. Great tits. Chiffchaffs. A wren. Jackdaws. I see a Pied Wagtail. I don’t know why, but I’ve been seeing more of them lately around the village. Normally they are a bird I notice on campus, hopping around the concrete and dodging the feet of students. Here they are more wary, keep a safe distance. The sightings are more fleeting.
We turn out of the woods and take the long road that intersects with the lanes. There is purplish honeysuckle growing in the hedges here. Spiky gorse as well. There is a lot of gorse in the hedges of the lanes and I like to imagine that it is an inheritance from the large common that was here until the early nineteenth century, when the rights of its use were finally stolen form the people in one of the last enclosure bills. In one of the fields left fallow we spot a group of roe deer, half submerged in the rough. Some must be curled on the ground, as only their ears are visible. Others graze. They seem unbothered by us or the noise of the occasional late rush hour car speeding along the road. A hare startles and runs.
6/6
There are rain showers all week. There is marking as well. Both conspire to keep me indoors. At least the showers are good for the garden, but the intensity of the marking means I have had little time to myself. I have read 72k words of dissertations over the last week, and a further 50 pages of a novel-in-progress. I have a further 45k words or so to mark over the next week, mostly shorter creative pieces. It is always pleasing to see the finished work of my students, but it is also mentally taxing to read at such a pace. Each piece, of course, requires thoughtful written feedback.
Another update arrives in my inbox about the Norwich Western Link from the council. It is a project update, and it feels as if they are, at last, finally admitting that the link road project is dead. The email hints at alternative solutions to traffic problems, the sort of thing that we campaigners have been recommending for years. The nagging doubt in my mind is that they will simply wait for the government to tear up the nature protections which they see as a hindrance to growth. The new Planning and Infrastructure bill seems designed to prevents projects like the Norwich Western Link being blocked by concerns over unmitigable impacts on habitat and species. It is heartening to see the Wildlife Trusts and other organisations working together and galvanising their membership to ask the government to rethink their approach. The decline of biodiversity in this country is entwined with the climate crisis. Healthier habitats, greater biodiversity, and nature recovery will help to mitigate the worst climate impacts. To use the much repeated, but nonetheless true phrase—there is no growth on a dead planet.
Ceci and I risk a long walk in the early evening. As the day cools the energy driving the rain showers is dissipating. The sunlight glares on the wet sheen of the tarmac, but where it falls through the leaves of the hedge oaks it feels softer. The deer we saw at the beginning of the week are still in the same field, their light brown flanks almost orange in the evening glow.
In the hedgerows, haws are forming, hard and green where the blossom has fallen. A kestrel is hovering over one of the large fields of rye, working its way slowly from one end to the other. Long-tailed tits shrill at each other as they bounce between the crowns of the ash trees. We follow the track up to ‘the top’, noting the dog roses as we go, how some have smaller blooms. Ceci says they produce smaller hips, but that all rosehips can be used for making syrup.
Past the old farmhouse, swallows swerve overhead before gathering on the wires and the t-shaped electricity pole. A bit further on, by the hollow, the rabbits are still eating the rye. They are about twelve rows in, and two of them scarper as we approach. A third is so engrossed that it only emerges when we are a few paces away. They all disappear in the thicket that flanks the hollow. The air here is heavy with the scent of elderflowers, which are growing in ivory swirls all along the edge of the hollow.
The wheat is yellowing in the lower fields, and we see a great block of it as we crest ‘the top’. By the little plank bridge over the ditch there is a young oak that is full of oak apples. I don’t think I’ve ever seen as many in one tree. It must be a good year for parasitic gall wasps. Their larvae create the galls from the oak’s own growth, then feed on the tissues it contains. The adult wasps will be emerging soon and once they mate, the females will lay their eggs at the base of an oak tree to begin the cycle again.
On the way back I follow the flight of green woodpecker. It dips in a line of parabolas, its fall rescued each time with a burst from its blunt-looking wings. It settles on an electricity pole, the same that had been populated by the swallows earlier. It is roughly halfway up it. I see it in profile, gripping on with its talons, —its quiffed head and pointed beak prominent. It makes a few rising circuits of the pole before launching off across the field towards the oaks in the hedgerow. It gives a brief yaffle as it alights.
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About ‘This Party’s Over’
On ‘This Party’s Over’ I publish my creative non-fiction, personal essays, place writing, and a country diary. My ‘Another Country Diary’ pieces are my most regular posts (about three a month).
The country diary can express a sort of local distinctiveness, explore a personal set of interactions with a landscape, and in doing so, almost accidentally, tease out the way the natural world is entwined with culture and politics. It can be a quietly radical and uncanny form, or sometimes just plain parochial, oddball in its specificity.
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Another Country Diary #28
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I'm glad it's rained. It's been ten years since I was in Norfolk in June to see the burgeoning countryside; not a lot of red kites then. But then, buzzards were unusual, once.