Report from Spring

blob lady bird lane lump buds blue fire

We're past the Equinox & Bealtaine & Liberation Day NL, and no late frost, so Spring must be sprong. As evidence I found the first ladybird Coccinella septempunctata this year (&/or several years) on mint Mentha spicata. And across the lane, blossoms on the damson tree [sorry about focus fail]. Having missed a late frost I have high hopes of damson Prunus domestica (jam) later.

Just uphill from the damson is a beleaguered apple tree Malus; much festooned in brambles, but that too is chock full o' blossom. And opposite the gate the lilac Syringa vulgaris is running a little behind the apple sporting only buds not blossoms . . . as yet. 

So much for fecundity! There has also been damage. I was making a last sweep outdoors as darkness fell on 29 Apr 26 when I spotted blue flashing light in the valley at The Cross 500m SE. I wondered and wandered through the fields a-piece to see who had been side-swiped at the junction. 
Answer: nobody. 
It was just a fire-truck and a tender and a few fire-fighters sitting and pacing, as if waiting for an emergency. It never occurred to me to look over my shoulder, and went to bed. I was just settling when our neighbour-across txtd me "Is the fire close to your house?". Clearly not close enough to have me throwing passports into a go-bag. A week later I was doing my annual Spring-scythe down the lane, so that the Blackstairs Walkers (due next Sat) might believe we cared about their free-passage. I tugged an eye-level swooping fern and tumbled a rock off the top of ditch. Lesson: Never play football with something larger than a football!

Tuesday, three days after 'our' fire made the National news, I walked up the hill to see, from the scorch-marks, how close to your house the fire had been. And, as important, whether it had eaten into 'our' common, thereby docking us all of our EU-subsidy for maintaining a fire-free special upland habitat.

It looks like one of the fires (there were several last week, locally) swept up from Wexford to have nip at the NE corner of our common [boundaries of whc in green]. The Government satellite will scope the details but it's looking like less than 2% of the 200 hectares comprising the common. Blazing heather is a Bad Idea: bad for ground-nesting birds, bad for heather, bad for beetles, bad for the soil microbiome, bad for micro-nutrients, and hill walkers get soot all over their spats. We took it in the neck last year. and in 2022. Please STOP.