May – Ready For Summer

Through the gap between the small pond and the big one, the sun dances on the water.

There’s a good breeze. The Phragmites australis is already waist high when I stand on the bank: straight and elegant with contrasting greens, and shadows that play tricks with your eyes so you can’t always see the stems, just stripes of unconnected colour.

The air is very fresh today. Dry. The birds are singing beautifully and busy nesting. On Monday we saw a thrush carrying two sycamore leaf skeletons for its nest.

Long shadows around the pond. Dappled shade from what are now big trees that we planted twenty years ago. The red Acer is fully out, Field Maple magnificent, Rowans in flower.

Dark cool grass, fresh and lush, makes me fearful of snakes. We have unwittingly created a snake haven. Down the side paths, under the ancient Oaks and Beech tree where it is cool shady and mysterious, I stamp hard on the ground as I walk to scare the snakes away. Judging by the vast number of tadpoles we’ll soon have a plague of frogs too. G found a slow worm when he moved a straw bale. Every kind of wildlife is here.

The Viburnum mariesii which were all grown from suckers from the original shrub in the herbaceous border, are now a huge 2 metre high next to the pond, which make an ideal hideaway for mallards and moorhens.