January
was wet and sometimes cold but not as severe as has been known. The
little Mole, who everybody had thought was still snoozing by his fire
had been out of his house and very busy judging by the large number
of molehills on Lower Green. In the old days villagers would have
been out to take the wonderful soft soil from these little aerated
mountains. One can be sure there is not a harmful bug inside and the
crumbly earth is ideal for refreshing house plants and for vegetable
seedlings.
In
the fields the pheasants celebrated the end of the shooting season by
coming out in droves and strutting around the lanes with a myopic
disdain for oncoming traffic and a patrician sense of ownership of
roads and hedgerows. Single hare too seemed to think it was already
March and were apt to bound across roads and leap to the safety of
the fields on the other side. Soon we will be seeing the famous
boxing matches and their sudden leaps,
darts and scuttles as Spring takes over their senses.
However,
early Spring harbingers, such as the first snow drops, could be seen
clinging to the banks of local lanes as if aware that winds were soon
to approach. These delicate and earliest of the Spring flowers seem
the least likely to push through frozen earth and take on the tough
misfortunes of this seasons weather and yet they they surprise us
every year.
In
the wider village there has been much discussion over the arrival at
a very big and venerable white house of a close friend of Mr Toad and
he is apparently creating chaos. Newspapers are full of cartoons,
disrespectful remarks and the like and the world seems to be going
through a period of change in which the disintegration of democracy
is coming about as predicted by Plato centuries ago.
Here
in the village this does not seem to be having much impact. Those who
go about take pleasure in the arrival of the long tailed tits at
their feeding stations and the promising shoots of early bulbs. In
the supermarkets there is much wringing of hands over the lack of
spinach, aubergines and lettuce because of severe weather conditions
in southern Spain. Those remembering the War simply shrug and say
“Get on with it”. We remember a time when food came only in its
season and roses from Ecuador and Kenya, asparagus from South Africa
and oranges from Israel had been neither thought of nor required. Our
local fields are either green or muddy brown but we can already see
the shoots of winter wheat and the burgeoning rapeseed plants that
will soon be framing our views. It would be nice if local farmers
planted a little flax just for the watery effect on the view but, of
course, that would be dismissed as the romantic notion it is. While
the watery sun, when it comes, lacks strength and the winds, when
they come seem to have added to their own strength, we remain inside
and it is a time to keep perusing the garden catalogues, dreaming of clumps
of peonies and new climbing roses and anticipating the cowslips to
come in the hedgerows. However glum the news there is still so much
to look forward to.
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