Village Country Diary continued from previous page
bell-like white flowers follow later. You can also find and eat ground-elder leaves, bittercress and white dead-nettle, and even daisies – all in the green and white. I am always pleased to notice that wild edible greens are available very early in the year, before most garden crops are ready. However, this is the time to start your potatoes chitting, ready for planting on Good Friday! In the hedges, the bird you will notice most at this time is the chaffinch. This is a striking bird with pink and slate-blue among its colours. It starts singing its distinctive territorial and mat- ing song in the middle of February, often around St Valentine’s Day. To me this is always a mark of the start of spring. Groups of long-tailed-tits are often around in February too, and the thrushes and blackbirds will be trying out their spring songs. All the birds are colourful now, so there is a break from green and white if you want one! At the end of the month, this year, comes
Shrove Tuesday, with another spring celebration. By that time, the colours will have changed. At some point in February, on a warm day, queen bees will start to emerge from their winter hiding places, and flowers will start to become colourful. I achieved my goal last year of writing a poem every day. Here is one of them from last
February. This year the gypsies were just leaving as I passed by in January.
Long-tailed tits The roundabouts
of Redditch The roundabouts of Redditch are famous For nerdy followers of their ugliness No one expects them to be things of beauty But suddenly they are. The cherry plum Lights up dark branches and the hawthorn leaves Begin to greenwash them, and hazel catkins Swing loose and lush and yellow in the wind. Soon they will be full of blackthorn and cherry Then hawthorn, and driving then is pleasure. Just when you’ve forgotten all this clarity In the ordinariness of summer green Autumn comes and the trees flame and glow And passing Redditch is a joy again. Come Christmas, the real gypsies arrive With their proper hooped wagons (not the kind That people swear about on Facebook) And make the roundabouts their home Keeping them warm while the buds form Inside the dark branches for next year.
46 The Village February 2017
New hawthorn leaves
Dog’s mercury
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