This has been languishing in my drafts folder for a fortnight and I was half tempted just to delete it and move straight along to May. But then I thought no, the forget-me-nots and bluebells should have their five seconds of fame, so I shall turn the clock back…
April is really the first month where the whole spectrum of colour kicks in in the wild places. After the gentle whites and yellows of early spring, suddenly there are all the blues and the occasional dash of hot pink. This year has been especially good for forget-me-not, with huge clouds of pale blue springing up between the last of the primroses. Walking along the lane at the back of the lake, suddenly the verge is dotted with bright blue cats eyes and hairy clumps of blue alkanet are thrusting themselves out from under the hedge. Bluebells have pooled in the light dappled shade of trees only just beginning to leaf and dusky leaved, mauve flowered, ground ivy scrambles over fallen branches and through the long grass. Wandering deeper into the woods, the shade has held the onrush of early summer at bay, with the last of the wood anemone spilling over the bank down to the river. Here and there there’s a bright colony of cowslips. Ferns are beginning to unfurl into quirky whorls and croziers and by the stream there’s a glint of marsh marigolds.
We have christened this walk the forager’s way. The hedge rows are full of gooseberry bushes, already covered with tiny hard green beads. Further in, where the trees hang over the road is a most enormous thicket of what I think will be redcurrants, with raspberry canes and arching stems of bramble weaving through. A white foam of blossom promises sloes for gin and tight green buds on young elder trees bode well for all things elderberry. I do hope I’m able to get around by harvest time! Coming back through the woods the smell of the exploding wild garlic sets me to thinking. Mum is deployed to shin up the banking and harvest some of our own ransoms for wild garlic butter. This is then deployed in a rather excellent (if I do say so myself) venison wellington and the remaining half sheet of puff pastry forms the base of a walnut and rhubarb bakewell. The eat what you grow season has well and truly kicked off!
On a longer walk round by the riverside I am suddenly assailed by a dazzling wall of yellow rape. It has taken my by surprise this year. The fields out front have been set to wheat and with the gammy leg, I’ve not been yomping round the fields at the back to see the rapeseed springing up. Even Lyra is set to sneezing by the cloying musky scent – two paddles are needed by way of refreshment. I make it down the slope for one but mum has to take the second, more vertiginous, track (madam is not inclined to dispense with an attendant rescue human). A trip out to Lachlan’s takes us along by some gloriously precise red clay shaws, corrugating the shadows of some surviving ash trees. They are just coming into leaf with a positive frisée of green emerging from the tiny black hooves at the tips of each branch. I do hope some resistance to die back can be found or bred in as it is a wonderful tree.
Matthew (and/or Matilda) the permacygnet has still not gone white…
