Sunday 21 March 2010

Equinox!


At precisely 5.31pm yesterday springtime officially began - and the days are now longer than the nights - well thank goodness. The word on the street is that it has been a long long winter, and it certainly seems to have been a colder one than we've had in a while. I haven't been out walking much since our trip to Folly Farm, partly because my knee's been playing up, and partly because I haven't had so much spare time. February came and went!
We have had some beautiful sunny days this month, and on Mothers Day I set off with my camera to check the progress of spring. Though the snowdrops and crocuses have been with us for a while, I think of them as winter flowers, and my criteria for spring are things like daffodils, celandines, cleavers and nettles.
Down Wick Lane, past the Mill, through the meadow, over Stoneage Lane, through the New Wood and Little Scotland, and back home via Splott Hill.
I did find spring, but a later one than in recent years – is this because of the colder weather? The daffodils are very delayed, I found hardly any flowering celandines, and only a few dandelion
leaves starting to grow. Nettles and cleavers are starting to sprout, and mercury and wild arum are romping away.
The early butterflys are about, I love the acid-yellow Brimstone that matches the yellow of spring flowers – yellow must be the colour for spring. The bees are busy again after their winter snoozing – those that have survived anyway. They have been going mad about the crocuses, dusting themselves with pollen and packing their legs with big lumps of it. The other day a big fat bumblebee visited the print factory and bumbled around, presumably attracted by the lights, although one woman said it was her hairspray – is she or isn’t she? (you have to be quite old to remember this ad!)
The frogs are on the march too – but I only know this from the ones that didn’t make it across the lane. The traffic is so light into the village that either they are very unlucky, or there are a lot of them on the move at night…

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