New Beginnings

Here I am a whole year later. It must be because this is the only time of the year I have to look at my beloved blog. But everything is going to change later in the year when I give up the day job and try to live like a crofter, making a living by doing this and that: crafting, writing perhaps, selling things at the Farmers' Market.

I spent early New Year's Eve bemoaning the Silent Spring that seems to have befallen my world. No insects, no birds except pigeons, magpies and rooks, no hedgehogs; nothing but badgers who leave their signs everywhere.

But in the joy of the new resolution early-morning walk, I saw that the bird life has simple left the haunts of man while it is so warm (about 11 degrees). First I heard a pheasant. Then I saw a raven. There suddenly appeared the first chaffinch I've seen for weeks, up on a hawthorn, and then six long-tailed tits on another one. Then there were some mixed great and blue tits on yet another one. It seemed to me today that if you plant hawthorn you will have birds. There were absolutely none in the beech clumps that adorn our Wiltshire hills. They are the home of wonderful wind noises (soughing being the main one), but not of birds.

Anyway, it was pleasing, and they will probably be back when there's a cold snap.

Then I saw a rabbit, so all is not lost! And I also found a clump of shaggy ink caps that I am cooking right now, mixed with garlic and baking on the top of two eggs. And then a huge clump of Jelly Ear which I have chopped tiny to dry on the Rayburn and then powder for soup. Those were my recipes of choice for those two funghi. I have an enormous box of paper recipes that I've been collecting all my life. I don't suppose I will ever look at them again, as whenever I want to make anything I just google it. People in the countryside have such lovely lives these days, as we have our cottages so warm, our wonderful broadband (if we are lucky, and I am), and the best of all possible worlds.

I came home to google house martins' nest boxes and there they were on Amazon. I bought two as an experiment, but could see how easily I could make more if ever I need them. Last year, for the first time ever, the swallows and house martins swooped in and out of my shed, the door of which was open to allow the neighbours' cats to sort out a wee mouse problem. I thought then that if there was some sort of support under the eaves of my cottage, then they might just decide to nest here for once -- as well as down on the farm where they are so much part of our divine summer scenery.

I have burnt a load of logs this winter. Although elm is about the worst wood for heat, it's great to stick the odd elm log in as it burns even slower than coal. It's a great log to put on when you are going out. I have a supply of elm stumps, as they are still growing to eighteen feet and then dying, as they have been doing for the last twenty years I've been here. I wonder if they will ever start becoming resistant.