Unexpectedly today was hot. Big billowy white clouds and blue sky. The rain has messed up the roses a bit and some are drooping with heavy clusters of flowers and brown soggy petals. Albertine has stood up, best this year and looks good in all weathers. But the scent is everywhere, from the sweet peas by the kitchen door to Buff Beauty by the workshop. Delicious.
I have a tale of mistaken identity to relate. Some years ago our neighbour gave me a currant bush. I swear he said it was a blackcurrant and I lovingly tended it, even taking three cuttings to produce more. All are thriving and this year had a lot of fruit, nicely turning colour from green to red. Big too - exactly blackcurrant size. We already had a redcurrant that produces puny fruit. Then Adrian says, those redcurrants are ripe on the new bushes. Red, I scoffed...fool, they are blackcurrants! I tasted one and realised he was right. Sob. All these years hoping for a blackcurrant... I let him pick them.
Anyway, back to today. I insisted on a walk but we changed tack a bit because of potential bovine hazards and went up past Selwyn’s towards Cheldon Cross. Leaning over a gate all we could hear were larks singing their hearts out across the moor. I got the phone out to record them and they just stopped. Completely. Total silence apart from the breeze and a distant blackbird.
A bit farther down the road they started up again, so we have a before and after pair of videos.
Adrian spotted an open field gate where obviously they’d taken a hay crop and as we’d never actually walked this one we set off round its edges. It’s a lovely field that rolls down in the direction of the river and you are soon out of sight in a secret combe. It belongs to our Dutch neighbour Hans and we are sure he won’t mind. Not much flora though apart from grass. Just some yarrow and a few patches of clover and buttercup.
Nice old oak trees and a lovely wild rose hedgerow.
And then! Wonderful...two hares charged down the hill. This to me is even better than seeing a heron.
They galloped about and away but didn’t seem at bit troubled by our presence. In fact this is a known hare patch and we do see them from time to time but usually from the car. It made our day.
One other piece of wildlife news - Adrian has now had 25 ticks. He’s going for the record this year!
And now I must return to Trondheim, having abandoned my Franco Norsk family for a group of foreign students. All obsessed by sjokoladekake and horrified by the cost of everything in Norway - alt er så dyrt i Norge!
