A spring-like day

Brimstone butterfly (Gonepteryx rhamni)

Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Meteorological spring begins officially on Sunday 1^st March. As if to herald that auspicious day, Wednesday was sunny and mild. We opened the patio doors to our sitting room to listen to frenetic birds singing loudly, claiming their territory, challenging their peers.

Squirrels cavorted in the trees, chasing madly up and down the tree trunks, leaping from pathway to pathway along the naked oak tree branches.

The first butterflies were flitting about the shrubs. A bright flash and flittering of lemon yellow, the Brimstone butterflies (Gonepteryx rhamni) had emerged from their winter hibernation in the ivy or holly or brambles. It is the males that are so gaily decked out. The mates they hope to impress are more soberly dressed in greenish-white. They are long-lived, these harbingers of spring, enjoying a full twelve-month of life. They survive almost freezing temperatures with glycerin, a natural ‘anti-freeze,’ and by controlling the water in their bodies. While the warmth of a February sun tempts them from their lairs, a sudden drop in temperature can send them back to shelter.

 

In the uncertain days of early spring, Brimstones rely on nectar from early flowering shrubs and flowers, like pussy willow, primroses, or dandelions, though there are none of these producing anything at present for their sustenance in our garden.

Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons

It’s good to be alive!        

Live and learn

 

Live and learn

This is the first in an occasional series demonstrating new vocabulary, sourced through my daily playing of Polygon. When I have exhausted my personal dictionary, all too often woefully quickly, I turn to the solution.

Recently, I discovered ‘joual,’ which may be familiar to the Canadians among us, as it is a patois, a popular form of Canadian or Quebec French. Joual derives from the rural pronunciation of ‘cheval’ (horse) There is more information here.

In the same polygon, I came across ‘rucola,’ which some may already know as rocket or arugula. It is pungent and bursting with vitamin C and iron. I always assumed that common or salad rocket and wild rocket were the same animal, just grown in different ways. I discovered that they are quite distinct. 

Salad rocket (Eruca sativa) is an annual plant with a milder flavour. The flowers are white.

Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Wild rocket (Diplotaxis tenuifolia) is a perennial with a more intense piquancy. The leaves are narrower than common rocket and deeply serrated. The flowers are yellow.

Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Finally, I found turaco, which ornithologists will know is a bird found among the trees of sub-Saharan Africa. Their diet consists mainly of fruit, and, though they are weak flyers, they are adept at running and leaping, with unique semi-zygodactyl feet. This means that the fourth toe can move forwards or backwards, according to need, to enable them to maintain a firm grip on branches.

Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Apart from their beautiful colouring and intriguing calls, they are one of the few birds which have truly green feathers. The feathers contain a green pigment called turacoverdin.

Whether I retain any of this newly-acquired knowledge remains to be seen!

Hedgehogs

 

Hedgehogs

Gareth's hedgehog, left, was intended to be a money box. Susannah's, right, wasn't!

I don’t know whether clay modelling is still something that children do at school. I came across these dusty hedgehogs that my children made when they were about eight years old. I suspect they had the same class teacher, two years apart, and perhaps the study of hedgehogs or other small mammals was part of the curriculum. It was definitely before the advent of the Great Education Reform Bill of 1988, always called Gerbil, but officially labelled the Education Reform Act.

Gareth's hedgehog had a very prominent nose. Perhaps his teacher made much of the hedgehog's predation on insects, snails, frogs, mushrooms and other delicacies.

Susannah's hedgehog is altogether smoother and more streamlined.

Before the National Curriculum was established, teachers were freer to follow their own pursuits and interests, to go off at a tangent. This worked well for those who still felt that children should be ’well grounded’ in the basics, the well-known Three Rs, but were able to interest their classes in other things. I well remember one seven-year-old excitedly telling her mother, ‘Mrs Cooke made fog!’

Anyway, the little hedgehogs my son and daughter made were brought home proudly to be displayed. My son’s work of art was intended to be a money box, with a slot in the top. Whether that was his idea or the whole class was encouraged to make money boxes, I don’t know. When his younger sister made hers, it did not benefit from a slot.

We used to see hedgehogs in the garden from time to time, but I haven’t seen one for an exceptionally long time. Our Jack Russell, Daisy, used to find one occasionally and come in covered in fleas. That was almost forty years ago. Fortunately, hedgehog fleas don’t survive on anything other than hedgehogs.

I’ve just found out that there are seventeen species of hedgehogs, though there are none in Australia and none now living in the Americas. New Zealand hedgehogs are an introduced species, as they are in the Outer Hebridean islands of Benbecula and North Uist.

They are distantly related to the much smaller shrews. Although their prickly spines are usually brown, the hedgehogs of Alderney, in the Channel Islands, are blonde.

In Britain, the population of rural hedgehogs has declined rapidly since 2000.

Substitutions

 

Substitutions

My grocery order has just been delivered, and it had some substitutions, which were quite acceptable. The young man helpfully holding up the crate so that I could transfer the contents to a bag – I always regard it as a weight-training exercise, which gets easier as the items are removed – told me that most of the substitutions are usually quite reasonable. Sometimes, though, they beggar belief, and bear little or no relation to the requested item. For example, one customer had ordered bread, but it wasn’t available and it had been replaced with tomato ketchup. What was the thought sequence there? Bread for sandwiches for cheese for pickle for ketchup . . .

Questions then arise about the state of mind of the employee whose job it is to select items for a customer’s list. These staff members are variously called Online Pickers, Online Assistants, Retail Assistants, or Personal Shoppers.

Everyone has off-days or lapses in concentration and I can well imagine how strange or unusual substitutions can be made occasionally. Lemon bleach for lemons?

It’s raining . . .

 

It’s raining . . .

It’s raining, it’s pouring,
The old man is snoring;
He went to bed
And he banged his head.
Ane he couldn’t get up
In the morning.

(Rain, rain, go away,
Come again another day.)

This nursery rhyme is American in origin and was first published in 1912. One suggestion is that the first line is a metaphor for a liberal outpouring of alcohol.The ‘old man’ bumping his head is a consequence of inebriation. 

The second  couplet in brackets is something I've always added when singing with children. 

Robert Louis Stevenson’s poem, ‘Rain,’ is sweet and simple and was included in ‘A Child’s Garden of Verses,’ first published in 1885.

The rain is raining all around,
It falls on field and tree,
It rains on the umbrellas here,
And on the ships at sea.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)

        `
                                               

Dusting

 

Dust if you must

Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Dust if you must, but wouldn’t it be better
To paint a picture, or write a letter,
Bake a cake, or plant a seed;
Ponder the difference between want and need? 

Dust if you must, but there’s not much time,
With rivers to swim, and mountains to climb;
Music to hear, and books to read:
Friends to cherish, and life to lead.

Dust if you must, but the world’s out there
With sun in your eyes, and the wind in your hair;
A flutter of snow, a shower of rain,
This day will not come around again.

Dust if you must, but bear in mind,

Old age will come and it’s not kind.

And when you go (and go you must)

You, yourself, will make more dust.

Rose Milligan (first published in September 1998 in ‘The Lady.’)

Rose Milligan was born in Yorkshire, but later moved to Lancaster, Lancashire, where she indulged her love of fell-walking. She died in 1994, leaving behind friends and a loving family, including great-great-grandchildren.

For those who are driven to dust – that is, the act of dusting, AI says:

Yes, regular dusting is essential for health and home maintenance. It removes allergens like dust mites, pet dander, and pollen that cause respiratory issues, while also preventing the buildup of harmful indoor chemical contaminants. Dusting improves indoor air quality, protects furniture from damage, and stops dust from attracting more dust. 

Hopeless

 

Hopeless

Flat-faced houses look out
On strangers passing by;
The pavement feet away,
The road beyond.

A bus trundles past,
Indifferent passengers
Gaze, glassy-eyed,
Noting nothing.

A to B,
B to C;
Endless journey,
Soulless.

Drugs, poverty,
Despair, fear;
No job, no hope,
No life.