Another One that Got Away

Things you expect to see in a field: sheep, cows, a farmer, grass …

Things you don’t expect to see in a field:

A large fish. A brown trout, to be precise.

Some context may be helpful here. It had started raining last evening, it had rained more or less all night, and all morning and it was still raining, albeit more lightly. Having been stuck in the house for most of this, I was out with a stick poking at the drains to clear the flooding on the road, which is my new favourite hobby (it’s the giant slurping plughole noise, I think). Having just cleared out the worst of the blockages, I looked into the field on the downhill side of the road and saw the fish.

My second thought (my first thought was ‘must blog this’) was to get someone else to come and see. The other half was out – and very miffed when he got back to discover that he could have had trout instead of leek and cheese pie for his supper – so I went up to the big house to get our landlady. She instantly recognised it as one of her fish (well, you would, wouldn’t you) escaped from the ponds in the grounds and which had presumably been swimming around happily in the road* until I came along with my interfering town ways. We got a bucket and scooped up Barry (the Brown Trout), as I shall not be naming him, and returned him to the pond with a cry of ‘be free, Barry, be free!’ whereupon he lay on his side gasping pathetically. It was never like this on Flipper, I tell you. I waded out and pushed him free of the weed and into deeper water and after a while he righted himself and swam away to our relief. Sadly, Barry, shall now probably be hooked out of the pond at the earliest opportunity by the son of the house – country folk haven’t a sentimental bone in their bodies – but I will have done my best.

Anyway, what with the airborne slugs, and land-based fish, it’s probably lucking we’re heading east for a week now. Lord knows what tomorrow would have had in store…

*Imagine explaining that one to the fishing police if you’d run it over…

A Worrying Development

Walking back through the garden this afternoon, I spotted something apparently hovering in mid-air under a tree. On closer examination, it turned out to be a slug, not hovering so much as dangling from a gossamer thread. I took photos but the camera couldn’t see the point of focusing on the slug when there was lots of lovely scenery to focus on instead, and the slug was swaying gently in the breeze anyway, so you’ll just have to believe me.

As a gardener, I can only think of one explanation for this phenomenom. The slimy buggers are experimenting with parachutes. Clearly their aim needs some work, as this was nowhere near the veg patch, but it’s a worrying sign all the same. Copper rings, egg shells, coffee grounds and grit will form no barrier to para-slugs with forward air capability.  And if this works, can mortars, IEDs and tactical nuclear devices be far behind?

Be afraid, gardeners. Be very afraid.

Home, James

‘So much for their unerring homing instinct,’ I said as we stood at the falls, watching the salmon leaping. Most of the fish were doing the textbook thing of heading up the waterfall for their home tributary, but there was one that either hadn’t read the textbook or had mis-programmed its GPS and was repeatedly leaping out of the water in the wrong direction and beating its head against the cliff wall instead. I wonder whether if you stood at the right spot and caught one, it would count as poaching? ‘It just jumped into my hands, officer…’

Anyway, hopefully my own homing instincts (although not to my natal spawning grounds) will be somewhat better as on Monday we’re off to Huttonian’s and on Tuesday I shall be here as part of my two nations (well, Scotland and England) in one day whirlwind book tour.

Trouble in Paradise

A wanted poster appears on Noticeboard Tree:

Have you seen a grey squirrel?

This is terrible news. Only this week we were going gooey over the antics of one of our red squirrels on the feeder. We knew the dreaded greys were getting closer, but hadn’t realised just how close they were. Argh.

Apparently, the Scottish greys don’t carry the pox that is so damaging to the local reds, so the two may coexist, at least until the English greys spread up from the south with their nasty southern diseases. But even so, the reds would be driven into the conifer plantations and we’d definitely be seeing less of them in the garden and round about. In some ways, that might be a relief. But in all other ways, it would be a crying shame.

While the Sun Shines

The weather’s been fairly grim these last few days – blustery, cool, raining and endlessly grey. Today looked like it was going to be no better but as the morning wore on we noticed a strange light in the sky and then – my God – enough sunshine to cast a shadow. The forecasts suggested we should get out and make the most of it while it lasted, and so we did. ‘Fancy a bike ride?’ I asked the other half, and curiously enough, he did.

There’s no other option on a day like this: the reservoir loop. I never get tired of this ride, although I do frequently get tired on this ride as, curiously, no bike lift has yet to be installed. But that’s what cameras are for: an excuse to stop and rest while pretending to take photographs of my favourite breed of cow:

We were nearly at the top when we saw this:

(and if you’re wondering, that impressive looking junction with the give way sign is actually the entrance to a farm track). Recklessly, we pressed on, pausing only to, once more, fail to capture the view from the top:

Twenty minutes of descending later and we found the roadworks, but the long delays were on their lunchbreak so we whizzed past without stopping (they were fixing the parapet on a bridge).

Then a quick stop at the waterfall to give the bikes a rest, and home for our own lunch break.

Rain forecast again tomorrow… oh well.

Actually, you can Forget Bicycle Lanes…

… this is what we need on the roads round here

Via Chic Cyclists.

Tempting Fate

Sometimes I wonder if my habit of leaving the bike unlocked outside the shop is going to come back and bite me one of these days. Theoretically, I’m only popping in for a few seconds, but sometimes there’s a queue, and even if there isn’t there’s usually a tale to be told, or at least some bantering to be done, and second turn into minutes. And the bike’s there regularly enough that if it should catch someone’s eye… I’d feel a right fool if it was stolen, and I’d have nobody to blame but myself. And the person who nicked it, of course.

But then, but then. My London-issue U-lock weighs a ton so I’d rather not cart it about, and really what is the point of living in the country if you can’t boast about leaving your bike unlocked outside the shop to incredulous Londoners? And why bother fiddling about with keys and locks for my bike when everyone else doesn’t just leave their car unlocked, but their engine running too and sometimes – like the van outside the shop this morning, while the owner was inside having a chat – the driver’s door wide open as well.

One of these days, if it’s raining, I might just be tempted myself.

What’s Brown and Sticky?

In the midst of death etc … I was up in the veg plot yesterday, clearing out the last of the broad beans and generally preparing for winter when I found that one of the mysteriously disappeared bulbs of garlic had not, in fact, disappeared, but had gone underground, as bulbs do, and was now busy putting up new shoots, possibly in a misguided belief that it was spring. I have my doubts that they will actually survive the winter, but I have carefully separated the cloves and planted them out individually just in case (the gardening columns all say now is a good time to plant garlic, but I suspect they’re written for southern softie type gardeners, not rufty-tufty Scottish ones).

And then, when I was clearing out the hawthorn sticks that I had put in to support the beans I found one of them had done this:

Not dead, only sleeping

That wasn’t in the script. I knew willow twigs would do this, but I’ve never seen it happen to hawthorn. Obviously, I can’t be doing with a hawthorn tree in my vegetable patch so I pulled it up and stuck it on the bonfire pile with everything else. And then, after a while, felt guilty and pulled it out again. It’s now stuck in the ground somewhere else where it can turn into a tree or not as it chooses. It’s hard to be ruthless with something so determined to go on living.

I’m not giving it a name, though. Because calling it Harry the hawthorn and getting all upset when itinevitably  succumbs to a late frost, or an early drought, or too much rain, or gales, or whatever, and dies would be silly.

Nope, I’m not getting fond of it at all.

Fill your Boots

It was, I suppose, inevitable after yesterday’s post, that I would set out today in what I hoped was ‘rain easing off’ weather, only to find that it was in fact ‘rain pausing in order to regroup for a more prolonged assault’ weather instead. Bleurgh. Sometimes those tin boxes have their advantages, like roofs.

Still, search hard enough on the internet, and you can always find someone who’s worse off than you.

Reasons to be Cycling

I’ve not been on the bike much this week – what with the weather, and being a bit under it, and being busy as well. But yesterday, I had to cycle down to the village in the evening, just as the last of the light was leaving the sky.

As I headed down the first hill, I became aware of something flying above me – a pipistrelle bat, jinking in and out of view as it hunted for insects in the dark. And then, as I turned the corner into the village itself, there was a great wild honking of geese, heading off to the reservoir to roost. They passed overhead, still calling to each other, only just visible against the sky, and then disappeared over the shoulder of the hill.

There’s a couple of people here who are puzzled by my insistence on cycling down to choir practice in the dark and who very kindly offer to give me a lift should I need one. I’m fully prepared to take them up on it, the next time that it rains. But when it’s dry, I wouldn’t be shut up in a tin box on that road for the world.