It has been a mostly sunny and dry week so the floods have receded, the ground is slightly drying out (I found my first crack in the clay soil today, for goodness sake), and spring is definitely springing. I have a couple of crocus planted out, I never remember where, but this year I did buy a cheap packet of bulbs and put them in a pot to be a pretty display. That didn't work as they sulked, so after a couple of months, when I bought a sorrel plant, I put it in that pot, while I continue to decide where I will have a bed of sorrel that won't be a slug or chicken magnet. Being crowded by a posh plant annoyed the sulking crocuses even more, so now they are coming up and flowering in a very small way, but rather pretty.
Other flowers and blossom are going great guns, which is sad, as it is too early! Our froufrou narcissi are up and at their best about two weeks too soon. The wild plums are nearly over and the mirabelles and small plums are coming out, the Victoria plum is rather later. While the trees have quite a lot of bees buzzing around, they are mainly solitary bees and bumble bees, so the local honey bees are missing out.
We are waiting for the soil to dry out a bit and become faintly manageable, but there are still some overwintering crops in there, and yesterday I dug up a fine bunch of multicoloured carrots. The packet always shows a lovely range of colours from white through to deep purple or black, but I always end up with cream, yellow and orange!
While there is still enough water in the ponds for me to be able to scoop some out without falling in or needing waders, I finally got round to doing a pond dip in the upper pond. There are no fish that we are aware of, and I've (sadly) not spotted and spawn this year, be it frog, toad or newt, so I wasn't really sure what, if anything, would be living in it. I managed to scoop out about a litre and a half of water at the edge of the pond and went for a walk while the debris and suspended mud particles settled. When I got back and started to review my catch, I remembered why I needed to take a couple of chairs with me for this exercise - it is harsh on thighs, calves and bum! I spotted 6 different species to my untrained eye, so there would likely have been more. I managed to photograph a few adequately.
There was this rather active water bug thing, which moved around a lot.
Then there was a water snail that moved around a bit too.
And there were lots of fine worms, that acted like snakes and travelled around the white tray a lot in the half hour they were in captivity.
There was also something that looked like a shrimp and very small oblong things that moved around pretty quickly too. I might have another go in a couple of weeks, remember to take a couple of chairs with me and perhaps also my field guide to icky things in ponds.
We went for a walk around the One Acre Wood yesterday afternoon and met a very fine beetle - while we hear birds and occasionally see a hare, the Wood seems much more sparse in terms of wildlife that the Orchard and Meadow. So meeting a beetle was something that was noteworthy, although I'm sure he had a lot of colleagues that we haven't met!
What the Wood lacks in visible wildlife, it makes up for in plant life. A few years ago - well that's what it seems like to us, but actually it's more like 15 years ago - we transplanted some woodland cyclamen into the Wood from another wood we managed. These lovely white, delicate flowers are slowly spreading along the paths we have made in the Wood, and every year there are more flowers. Trying to spot where the next outcrop of flowers will appear should be easy, except that cyclamen leaves and ivy leaves get mixed together and aren't always easy to tell apart!
Anyway, that's it for today, as we have emergency apple and pear pruning to be done, but I hope that next week I will have some animal videos and photos to share with you, rather than bug pictures.
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