A FALSE SPRING?

It is Wednesday and by lunchtime it is 20C in the shade. Rising with the sun at 7 am, a pink sky over Bowland, a layer of polluted air hanging over Lancaster and Morecambe, I feel a sense of place and belonging.

The wood pigeons nesting in the old Christmas trees by the shed are in full voice, a song thrush is tripling, a robin greets the day, a pair of mallard are on a pond of frogspawn.

(So, which comes first - the frog or the spawn?)

Our bedroom is cordoned off with sheets of polythene as the builders break through from the new extension.

Flowers have erupted in response to this false spring - daffodils, crocus, celandines, daisies . . . change is so fast every photo is out of date by the next day.

The grass is growing, needs a cut (but too wet in the morning)(anyway I cannot get the mower past the builders van)(I know - I could ask them to move but . . .)

There are other flowers - pulmonaria, banks of wild primroses and hellebores fighting through the builder's rubble and stacks of paving stones.

Down in the pond insects are creeping out of the water onto dry stems ready to expand their wings and fly - dragonflies and damselflies.
Waterboatmen ripple the mirror-like surface as the moorhens paddle across with their big feet.

Back outside the kitchen door I notice my almost tame cock pheasant has a damaged tail feather - has he been in a scrap with another cock pheasant?

And the resident mallard are not going away. If not on the pond they sit on the shed roof or wander up the bank towards the house.

One thing that does concern me, as a consequence of having our summer in February, is that the buds on the plum and pear are beginning to break. If we get a hard frost on the blossom we lose the fruit for the year.

Signing off as a storm named Freya spirals in. It is raining, windy and I am listening to a Howling Wolf CD.