Spring is bursting out all over š±
Do you feel the sap rising?
Spring has been moving too fast for me to keep up with it. I feel Iām missing out. There was little time to enjoy the wild cherry blossom before it was blown off the trees and now the bird cherry is out.
The frothy blackthorn blossom also seemed to last no time before it became a scatter of tiny petals on the ground. It was replaced on the dark twigs by oval green leaves, opening like hands in prayer. And now the hawthorn buds are bursting: little white cups hiding all sorts of secrets, including spiders and the flies they have caught. Normally, in our part of Scotland, I expect hawthorn to come out during the last week of May, not in the first!
In the past, I diaried the 20th of May as a good time to photograph bluebells. That was when I could expect them to be fully out and not yet withering. But they already seem to be at that point today. The sand martins were back early, though Iāve barely seen any swallows ā and where are the swifts?
Last week on Substack, I posted these photos of two local trees in a Note where I said, āI canāt believe how far advanced spring is this year in Scotland. Here are an oak and a sycamore tree, both dressed more appropriately for June than the first week of May.ā
I feel uneasy and unsettled because things are happening too fast and out of order. Like a machine thatās about to breakdown, parts are spinning out of control with fragments flying off and being lost. Gaia is in trouble.
March was so dry that much of Scotland had an extreme risk of fire, a risk that materialised with several large blazes across swathes of hill, moor and wood. The lack of water held back the growth of grass and trees, everything seemed in suspension until we had some rain around Easter. Then spring exploded, as if all living things were trying to grow before drought checked them again. It looks as if that might happen. Much as I personally enjoy the long sunny spell of weather weāre having, the shortage of rain is not good for nature.
The rivers are dwindling with bleached stones lining their narrowed beds. Our nearest stream has sunk into the thirsty gravel. Lambs are chasing around fields that should be lush green, but have a dusty look. The ewes will be struggling to find enough fresh grass to keep their milk flowing. It would be ridiculous (in Scotland in spring!) if farmers had to give their flocks supplementary feeding.
I find it disturbing that the rapid alteration in our climate is stressing natural systems and driving some species towards extinction. There are winners as well as losers, both nuthatches and speckled wood butterflies have moved into our area since I started living here. But the frightening thing is the overall loss in abundance of most insects, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals.
This awareness makes it all the more precious that I can sit here on Friday evening, writing this in my campervan, while listening to the sounds of nature outside. I hear a drawn-out, wheezy peewit from a lapwing looping over the field, a piercing piping of oystercatchers and the lonesome calls of curlews. Plus, in a tree nearby, the scratchy, inquiring song of a common redstart and, overhead, the honking blether of a pair of greylag circling into their roost.
What can I do but savour the wonders we still have? When the world seems to be going to hell in a handcart is it wrong to enjoy our part of it, if we are lucky enough (unlike so many) to be living in peace with our essential needs met. Maybe it is actually our duty to celebrate what we have as much as possible. And encourage others to do so too. Humanity only looks after that which it values, so we need more people to value nature if we are to protect it.
Spring is my favourite season. I find it energising, as if the sap were rising in my own veins. It brings so many moments of pure joy, as when walking through a birchwood newly in leaf and breathing its sweet, peppery, balsam aroma. Or watching the spiralling flight of orange-tip butterflies as a male courts a female.
As someone who keenly observes each species of wildflower as it appears, I could keep up initially with the violets, lesser Celandine, primroses, barren strawberry and opposite-leaved golden saxifrage. I noted the wood sorrel and wood anemones appearing, the gorse flowers then the broom. But in the last fortnight Iāve been overwhelmed by the explosion of wildflowers in the banks and hedgerows.
It all feels rather like partying before a calamity hits. The forecast is for sun and barely any rain for the next fortnight. Will these bright blooms wither in no time, the ground crack and the harvest of fruits and grain fail for lack of water?
As I finish drafting this in the early morning, a cuckoo has just started calling. For how many more years can I hope to hear this harbinger of spring?
I am posting this late in the day because I spent the morning doing a butterfly survey (lots of orange-tips and green-veined whites) then in the afternoon carried water uphill to trees we planted earlier this spring. The bare soil around them is baked dry. By the time I had gone back down and returned an hour later with another 20 litres, there was no sign of my first watering ā the soil was dry again.
How are the seasons behaving where you are?