Heading for the hills - taking my three children away from all they know...

  Hunting grasshoppers  A wonderful day of sharing the meadow…  and I could have left it at that but instead dampened the experience by arming them with cutters. We went on the full loop into the woodland and attacked the ASBO stretch of bracken, nettles n brambles together turning a Merry Ramble into hard work.  I’m hoping it heightened the moment when we emerged into the light again. Thank you K n G n team!X Ps: George suggested I tackle the summer enthusiasts and path spoilers head on and get a beefy strimmer. I somehow like the slow process of looking, thinking, cutting but it would make life easier. I also need a large mower that collects grass. Im dithering about the cost but land management does cost...

My word the meadow is heaving with the chirpy chaps! Today the girls gathered them up in handfuls and examined them closely in a magnifying collecting pot. It was so wonderful to see irrepressible wildlife excitement  …and whatsmore NO adult or manufactured instruction was involved.  I’ve had my own marvelling at grasshoppers lately. It happened when I wandered up the path and heard a wave of seed popping. The all important hay rattle bursting its seams and scattering it’s seeds with a pssst. I spent rather too long wondering what the link between my movement and the dispersal was…a wave of celebration, wind, approval or in fact the bounce of hoppers out of my way knocking the dry seedheads. I have never thought of them as agents of dispersal. But they are and the result was a musical 🎶 click, psst, click, click, psst, psst, psst. My own unexpected wildlife discovery.

I saw my first blue today, wings outstretched and illuminated by the gnapweed (ofcourse). It had a neat white line around the edge of its wings. But little else to give it away. The blues are so exciting - they seem to have captured a slice of singing sky and bought it to earth.  But also so hard to identify and range from the common to less to extremely rare, even to the once extinct… you can find reintroduced Large Blue on a bank in Gloucestershire.  My first blue brings me to…  1. The need to learn to ID the many species 2. Musing on symbolism of butterflies 3. My anxiety that I have only seen one… will it find a mate? 4. The joy of then visiting the Natural History Museum in Oxford.  Having been starved of its ways for months, drinking deep the new interpretation (while having to suppress my deep annoyance that I didn’t get the job to help with its development and then the awkward realisation that I am awe struck by their creativity and fear I might not have done...

The bare earth has sprouted! With the help of regular watering it has turned into a blaze of glory. I hope the pollinators will be very pleased.   

When HB arrived in Oxford I was suspicious. The garish branding and warehouse style facade didn’t draw me in. Then one day curiosity overtook me and I poked past the wall of cutprice cereal only to discover the themed section. It was eye popping. A wash of things I didn’t realise I needed or wanted at Easter - a cascade of bonnets, costumes, felt baskets and endless affordable chocolate novelties. A fantastic bit of retail therapy. (On that first trip I also came away with a toasted sandwich maker impulse buy…) So when I discovered HB down a back alley in Monmouth I felt a wave of relief, comfort and almost a sense of ‘belonging’. Then I discovered it had its very own parking area in this relatively small market town. My barometer recalibrated and all Monmouth’s independent retail shops paled into obscurity compared to the fix HB has to offer. Whether it’s a bumper pack of crisps, colouring book and scented pencils or large bag of meal worms there is something to cheer everyone u...

there is simply nothing more beautiful than a hollyhock. I find them really mesmerising. Their habit of sprouting out of rugged paving, empty cracks, dry soil. They provide a frilled celebration against the wall or corner of something until then unmarked. They prefer not to be invited and seem to have their own idea about when and if they will appear, and what colour they will choose to wear. I first began my admiration of them in Germany about 6 years ago and collected seed all over Kronenburgh. My attempt to plant them then failed. My next seed collecting quest was in Oxford, mainly the streets of Jericho and north oxford. I would walk the street usually at dusk hunting down every colour. The thrill of finding a new colour is immense and once in my sight I was unshakable in my intent to gather seed - creeping over garden walls, dodging on lookers. I have a very handsome seed collection. I've scattered some in uninviting cracks here but fear the very nature of a hollyhock is ...

I’m consumed by a feeling that I’ve been here before and flung into a mysterious experiment... location: Monmouth. Everyone I meet I’ve met before, but where? Another life or am I part of an experiment in cryogenics or time travel?  It happens on a daily basis.  I want to tell groovy X with short hair who used to be a newspaper editor and now keeps bees and has mud under her nails from outdoor work … that even though we’ve just meet we know each other really well. We have probably danced the night away at many a festival? I can see it in her eyes. Or the lovely ex professional internationally acclaimed horse rider who wears all seasons in her face and exudes warmth that we too have met a lot somewhere before. Even the woman who I chatted to at swimming classes and liked so much who now strangely gives me a frosty look in Waitrose. Perhaps she harbours some grievance from a playground scrap we had aged 6 or fight after too much Thunderbirds over who was going to smoke the last ...

It seems to me that there is no limit to the wit you can conjure up around choosing a name for your animal.  I have never actually explored the comedy element myself but do get deeply involved in the choosing game and spend days turning over ideas. I enjoyed choosing my children's names so much and in fact spent about 9 months thinking of little else. When I had MrMcGregor trapped in a car I would try to get him to review my long list and shorter list, he had almost zero interest and said helpfully he would know when he saw him/them. In fact his only actual suggestion was Tractor and then when he saw Laurie he said he hadn't a clue but should we google any interesting meanings linked to the fact he was born on a no moon night? He did come up with some intriguing and unprouncable Arabic name that I felt wasnt that relevant without a hint of Arabic roots.  When I presented him with Gabriel or Laurie he still couldn't choose and in the end an unknown neighbour in a cafe t...

da daa da daa da daa ... came the sound of Roger on horse back with sword brandished high, glinting through the freezing fog. Or rather the rumble of the engine of his car ladened with pots, brushes, pasting table, dust sheets, kettle, coffee, sleeping bag and much else all the way from Oxford. I had a secret weapon and it came from my old life which was peopled and functioning (more of less). It was Roger the best of decorators and carpenters and fixing broken things. And the very kindest of people. He would have been a Knight in former times though he might not have liked the chainmail as he prefers to wear board shorts in all weathers.  Roger had been in the wings of our lives since September. I had him lined up to help when we were first going to move in in October..then had to ask him to rejig plans to pre Christmas then finally he was given the 'go' in the coldest of months in February, once we had finally exchanged. Despite the shorts Roger has reunards and has to h...

we arrived in our new house at the beginning of February. In the frost.  The strangest of all feelings was driving up the hill and the narrow drive through the lofty trees towards our new house...and new life. A journey made after a year of negotiations, cul de sacs and hulking upheavals in all forms - (oh yes plus the 8 years of searching all over the country for somewhere that fitted our exacting and contradictory wish list).  And on that day we headed towards a place we hardly knew and into a life we knew even less of. We had only managed fleetingly visits to the house and garden but had scurried into the slice of woodland on a few occasions as it has a public right of way through it - hugging the slope above the stream. The vendors found leaving after 25 years very hard and our prying eye wasn’t helping. So the purchase was painful and arms length and based on a sense more than cold, calm reality.  I had fallen in love with the atmosphere as you approached the fr...