Winter 8

Has Spring started before the end of winter?

Sunday 14th February, 2016

Monday

When I got up it was not actually raining but patio was wet so there must have been a recent shower.  I checked the rain gauge - looking through the bedroom window and using binoculars.  We had over two and a half inches during the first week in February.  The forecast for the next couple of days suggests a drier but colder spell.  In other words - more normal February weather.

While I was looking out the window the huge, mechanised refuse lorry passed our house - in reverse!  This solves the question of how it manages to turn half the way up the narrow glen road now that the edge of the road further up has been damaged by floodwater again.  The answer is that it doesn’t.  The driver must reverse across the bridge and all the way up to the big communal bin that we pass during our walks.  The skill of the heavy vehicle drivers when negotiating our narrow and winding roads never ceases to astonish me.

We extended our top of the glen walk this morning to include the two post boxes in the glen.  I intended photographing them last week but forgot.  There are no shops or pubs in the glen but we are oversupplied with antique post boxes.  

The oldest near Ballagarrow, dates back to Victoria’s reign and is labelled “Glen Auldyn Village”.  Barely a quarter of a mile further up the glen there is the Georgian post box which is labelled Glen Auldyn Bridge.  It must have been erected here in the early 1930’s during the reign of George V when the tiny Glen Auldyn Post Office opened nearby.  In the past Glen Auldyn attracted tourists to the tea gardens and waterfall up in Fern Glen. They were ferried in by a bus service from Ramsey.  The tourists, the bus, the post office and the tea gardens are long gone.  Now only the post box remains to remind us of past glories.  There is a third post box, an Elizabethan one, about a mile from our house. It is near the end of the glen at the Lezayre Road/Gardeners Lane junction.  We sometimes use this one because it is the only one with a “mouth” wide enough for the square National Trust cards that I prefer to conventional birthday cards.

I am ashamed to record yet another”no gardening” day - and the no gardening will continue for a while because I have a niggly back pain and I don’t want to aggravate it.

Tuesday

A memorable day because it was our youngest daughter’s fiftieth birthday.  I am not sure how this happened.  I don’t feel old enough to have one fifty year old child, let alone three.  I rather liked a little note on a Facebook collage which our daughter’s husband had created in honour of the occasion:

looks 22

feels 18

acts 10

that makes me 50

I can identify with the concept of feeling and acting younger than my age - but as far as I am concerned the looking younger doesn’t apply, unfortunately.

We walked to the Whitebridge, intending to extend the walk to three miles by adding a short stroll up the riverbank on the north side of the river.  Another best laid scheme that ganged agley. The lower reaches of the Sulby are tidal and it  was just past a particularly high tide.  It was touch and go whether we would even reach the bridge with dry feet.  

I took this photo from the bridge - a couple of ducks enjoying a swim in shallow water covering a patch of grass on the river bank.

The path that we had intended walking along  was still under water but before we returned home we crossed the bridge and I took a photo of more water, more ducks and Skyhill.

On Wednesday we repeated the walk to Whitebridge but extended our route by returning through Ramsey.  We also, added the bit along the river that we couldn’t do on Tuesday, plus a short detour up Milntown Lane in a futile search for rooks’ nests.  We could just glimpse a couple of big nests in the trees in the Milntown grounds from the glen road but they were too far away for us to identify the occupants.  We thought we might see them better from the lane but couldn’t see them at all from that side of the property.

The road walking is getting very repetitious and nothing is happening in the garden so I was pondering on the fact that I seem to be writing reams of waffle about very little and wondered whether I would end up being one of those experts who know more and more about less and less until they know everything about nothing.  Maybe I could end up being an expert on the potholes in the glen road.

But there are still new things to see.  On our way home through Lezayre Park we saw this sparrow sunbathing on satellite dish.  We used to watch sparrows having dust baths in the garden of the house that we rented in Ramsey but they never frequent our part of the glen.

Thursday 

We decided to be more ambitious and try a longer walk.  We started off on the usual Whitebridge route but turned west along the Jurby road.  At first we walked through suburbia but eventually we left the outskirts of Ramsey behind and reached farmland.  There is so much sky out on the northern plain - ideal for battery recharging!

It reminded me of my favourite cartoon by the Australian cartoonist, poet and philosopher, Leunig - with whom I share a fondness for ducks.  No ducks in this cartoon though . . . just truth.

A little further on the sky was reflected in a large puddle - a double dose of recharging, maybe.

When we reached the road leading the Garey ford we turned south towards the river.  Just before the footbridge we came across this sign.  There is no escape from ducks on the blog this week.  

While we were standing on the footbridge watching a group of ducks a vehicle drove across the ford.

And then we witnessed a fierce duck fight!

On the road back to Lezayre road we could see the other side of Skyhill - the west side.

Every time we walk down the glen road we enjoy this view of the east side - with its wooded and jutting slopes rising above the Magher y Troddan (Field of Conquest).  It is a magical hill. It is said that it  was once occupied by “a fundamental stratum of the population, confused or identical with " the Fairies."  One of the farms on top was held to have been " the first house " (or " the oldest house ") that was ever lived in in the Isle of Man."  Moreover, a certain Miss Douglas had a nurse and the nurse had it from her own father that “the fairies used to have a regular city just about there, and ones had seen it all lit up at night when they would be passing.”

We returned along Lezayre Road - a busy road and part of the TT course.  This building is the Lezayre Church Hall.  A building of no architectural pretensions - but important nevertheless because Alexander went to school there. 

All the Schippies were taken to obedience classes in a vain attempt to socialise them but Alexander was the only one who behaved well enough to attend regularly.  The others weren’t expelled but we stopped taking them because they found it too stressful (and so did we because they behaved so badly).   Their schooldays were not the happiest days of their lives.

Later we passed the lovely meadows and old trees of Ballakillingan.  This is a dairy farm and there are often black and white cows grazing in the meadows.

We also passed an old, ivy covered bench decaying happily in a hedge - just the sort of photographic subject that Dorothy and Trevor, our hiking friends, like.  So I took a photo of it.

Friday was shopping day so we just did a short road walk and I took a photo of our first daffodil of 2016.

Saturday 

The patio on top of the garage was dry this morning for the first time in months - even the little puddles had dried out.  So we decided to risk the mud and tackle a Brookdale plantation walk.  There was still plenty of mud at the bottom of the hill but on the plus side there are just peaceful trees for company instead of speeding cars to dodge.

We discovered that walking along almost flat roads is no substitute for climbing steep hills if you want to increase fitness. The climb to the view site in the plantation is less than a mile from our house but it seemed more tiring than yesterday’s long walk.

I love the old moss-covered stone walls in the plantation.

Clouds had gathered over North Barrule, but while we were up at the view site, the sun was shining on the northern plain.  Part of the new housing estate on Gardners Lane is visible in the bottom left corner of this photo.  And just to the right of the buildings, behind some open fields, you may just be able to make out the Whitebridge . . . if you are eagle-eyed.

After lunch I did a little gentle pruning and weeding in the garden to see how my back would cope.  I finished trimming the tutsan down by the road, weeded out some dandelions which were thinking of flowering, and started removing some yellow archangel from a flower bed near the drive.  The bees like this plant and so do I - but it grows too well in this spot and is trying to take over the whole area.  I want to remove it all and plant my hydrangea cuttings there instead.  They have been waiting patiently in pots for over a year and will be a low maintenance substitute for the archangel.

Sunday

We finished the week with a quick road walk in the glen.  A cold day but there was intermittent bright sunlight and I couldn't resist another photo of our first daff - backlit by the sun.

Now the big question is . . . Is it going to be an early spring?  Mid-February seems too early to be predicting the start of spring but I usually date our personal start of spring from the day that the first daffodil opens in our garden.  And our first one opened three weeks earlier than the first daff of 2015.

The birds are also getting excited about the approach of spring.  We have heard wood pigeons cooing recently and more twittering than usual in the garden. On Wednesday, while we were walking, we noticed pairs of jackdaws and hooded crows flirting. And on Saturday morning we heard our first chaffinch song of the year in Brookdale. Tim has also seen a great tit checking out the nest box.

The season of dawn choruses and lawnmowers is looming on the horizon - and the efficient gardeners have already given their grass a trim.

PS  Our total walking distance this week was over 21 miles.