Sunday 21 April 2013

Co-ordinated colour

I'd say spring has arrived here at last - and it's yellow. Everything has been delayed this year, but it all seems to be coming together just now.
The grass on the lawn is only just beginning to show much growth, but the chilly weather hasn't held back the dandelions. In yesterday's sunshine the new dandelions seemed to blaze their brightness back at the sun.
And along the hedge there's more yellow too - lesser celandine covers the ground. Overnight the weather has changed and this afternoon is wet and gloomy, so all those bright, little celandine stars have re-closed.
Wordsworth wrote about lesser celandine shrinking from cold and rain but at 'the first moment that the sun may shine, bright as the sun himself, tis out again'. Taking time to enjoy the sun yesterday I was able to keep an eye out for returning swallows; I saw one briefly on Thursday, but yesterday there were half a dozen over the valley.
And when I checked with a torch last night 'my' swallows were back roosting on a beam in the garage roof on either side of last summer's nest. All that way and they make a beeline to my garage, marvellous.
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Thursday 11 April 2013

Welcome back

Overnight we've had rain after about a fortnight of dry weather. The mini-drought has been holding back grass growth and in places the hillsides are turning brown.
Strange days. But this morning the ground is wet because there's finally been some rain in the night and, if the BBC weatherman is right, there's more on the way.
It feels as though spring has been on hold. Things are changing though, I've just been in the garden and heard my first chiffchaff of the year.
Looking back at last spring's posts, 2012's first chiffchaff was in mid-March. Are they arriving a fortnight later this year, or is it just that I've been not been in the garden so much because it has been cold.
Today's chiffchaff was in the same spot as last year's - some mature trees behind the houses across the road from us. But it didn't seem up to performing its full song, just the warm up notes before the main event; maybe it takes a while to get over the journey.

Friday 5 April 2013

Bee un-happy

When the time came to step up and do the decent thing our Government chose not to follow the evidence and protect bees. Disappointing, but then you don't expect much in the way of common sense from the Palace of Westminster, do you? 
But it's nice to see that a Select Committee can look at a problem and see it for what it is. The Environmental Audit Committee has been looking at the impact of pesticide use on bees and other pollinating insects (read its report here) and says: “Defra seems to be taking an extraordinarily complacent approach  to protecting bees given the vital free service that pollinators provide to our economy."
Just as it took an extraordinarily complacent approach to the threat of imported tree diseases. After doing nothing for years it now has the huge problem of ash dieback to deal with.
The committee, with members from all parties, says a "growing body of peer-reviewed research" suggests that the use of one group of insecticides, neonicotinoids,  is having an especially damaging impact on pollinators. Neonicotinoids are put on crops like oilseed rape, maize and sugar beet as well as being sold for garden use, so there's a lot of the stuff around.
The MPs want an immediate moratorium on use of neonicotinoids until the science can show for sure whether they are harmful or not, which seems sensible. The committee's chairman says "there is no justification for people continuing to use these products on their Dahlias when they could be having a detrimental effect on pollinator populations".