Blackbirds and thrushes

The blackbirds and thrushes sang in the green bushes…

goes the folk song. Our garden is full of them at the moment, all intent on feathering their nests and nurturing their genes. At this time of year one of my amusements is watching sparrow fights, in which a horde of shrieking fluttering little brown birds rampage round the garden, like small boys in the school playground. This morning, though, it was blackbirds – five of them whizzed past me and into the hawthorn hedge, where I wondered if they would escape without getting spiked, so intent were they on each other.

Now that I’m at my desk, two very handsome song thrushes are stalking round the lawn, while overhead two buzzards soar. They too have been very active in the last few days, with some aerobatic displays more readily associated with some of the more agile raptors. This year I think we are going to have the buzzards nesting in the wood at the foot of the garden, while the sparrowhawks will probably be back in their usual tree just beyond the paddock. With both lots of fledglings screaming imprecations at their parents it could be a noisy summer. If you haven’t heard a hungry young sparrowhawk, believe me, it can shriek for England!

It’s pretty noisy already, in fact. There is a rookery here, and now that the rooks are convinced that spring is here, activity is non-stop. They wake at about 4am, with sleepy squawks and grumbles, and by about 5.30 the air of full of creaks and groans as they gear up for another busy day of collecting twigs. It’s not just picking of sticks (there’s another folk song – I’m as bad as the birds today) from the ground, the trees are full of rooks bent on that perfect twig, tugging away with dogged determination. On the fringes are the jackdaws, but they can’t compete for noise. Rook activity goes on all day, foraging for food and sticks, then as dusk falls those who aren’t nesting gather in our ash trees in great flocks like a flight of broken umbrellas, before rising all at once in a black cloud, streaming overhead on their way to their night roost in the woods.

Ornament and comely grace

Spring in Northumberland isn't very far advanced yet, and I am swamped with work, so this morning I took a detour via the Garden Centre on the way back from the bank, and bought two deliciously scented sweet violets (viola odorata) - I wish Blogger had a scratch-and-sniff function, because they are quite delectable. They will do nicely to assuage my immediate need for spring flowers. With luck, they should also self-seed themselves around the place, which would be delightful.

In the tapestry series The Hunt of the Unicorn, one of the flowers surrounding the captive unicorn is viola odorata, because the sweetly-scented blooms are symbolic of fertility:

and in the Herbal, Gerard says:

very many by these Violets receive ornament and comely grace: for there be made of them Garlands for the heade, nosegaies and poseies, which are delightfull to looke upon and pleasant to smell to...Gardens themselves receive by these the greatest ornament of all, chiefest beautie, and most gallant grace; and the recreation of the mind which is taken heere by, cannot be but verie good and honest...

They amongst our oldest medicinal plants, containing salicylic acid among the active constituents, and were used by the Athenians "to procure sleep", while the Anglo-Saxons used sweet violet as a wound-herb and a cosmetic. The Romans made wine with the flowers, and of course they have long been used in perfumery. Crystallized violets were a popular delicacy, and in the time of Charles II "violet sugar" was a favourite.  The leaves can be used in salads (although they have a laxative effect) and were used in poultices. You could try using the fresh leaves on bruises, for a cooling and soothing compress. Or, if you like a seriously sophisticated treat, what about these?

To crystallize violets, dip the flowers in beaten eggwhite, or paint the flowers with a small brush. Then dip them into caster sugar, or sprinkle it over them if the flowers are very delicate. You can do the same with primrose flowers to make pretty decorations for an Easter or simnel cake.

Spring Bluebells

It was a lovely morning, and while I cleaned out the chicken house, the ladies took a stroll. Betty has entirely forgotten her horrible experience with the buzzard, and investigated every nook and cranny under the ash tree, but the Bluebells preferred to bathe in some nice soft, dry soil. Bliss all round.

Buzzard attack!

 

Along with a lot of other people, I have always believed that buzzards won't attack chickens, so it was a considerable shock to find that while I was away recently, my favourite hen, Betty, had been attacked. She's the smallest of our girls, so it was very fortunate that the attempt was unsuccessful, leaving her bloodied and shocked, but basically okay. The girls had been free to wander in the paddock, which they loved, but have now been relegated to their covered run again, unless there is someone out in the garden to keep on eye on them. We were all outside on Sunday, and it was good to see that she's entirely recovered from the experience (or forgotten all about it). That's a very youthful Betty at the front of the picture - she's not at all pretty, but she is very sweet. When they were free to roam she would rush up the paddock to greet anyone who went out there.

A quick Google search suggests that it's not, after all, uncommon for buzzards to look beadily at chickens, but it does seem significant that it happened at the end the winter, with snow having lain for a much longer period than I've seen for years. When we came to live here about 15 years ago, there were no buzzards at all, but now we have quite a large population. We also have plenty of small creatures as a rule, on which they can feed, but this winter the voles were snug under a couple of feet of snow.

Spring flowers

Spring has certainly arrived in Devon, though there's still not much sign here in Northumberland - since I got back on Thursday it has been cold with a smattering of snow. I may go and buy some flowering bulbs to cheer up the garden!

A blousy wench

I can't remember which variety this is - it's the first time it's flowered, just in time to cheer everyone up post-Christmas.

Automatic writing

I wish! Finding time to write blog posts is always something of a struggle (and of course it was idiotic to land myself with two blogs to keep up) so I find myself eagerly seeking new ways to make it easier. I already travel almost everywhere with a laptop, but evenings in hotel rooms or long train journeys are often spent working rather than relaxing. Posting by phone is beyond me - I am a slow texter, writing words in full and scrupulously correcting mistyped letters.

What I really wanted, I mused, was a device that would transcribe my thoughts as I look out of the train window. This reminded me of a Russian short story I read many years ago, about an inventor and writer who developed a machine that would record his thoughts. With such a device, he thought, he could write masterpieces! So he settled down with his machine to compose his magnum opus, only to find later when he looked at the tape, that it read something like, "Sitting by the blue Black Sea...why is the Black Sea blue?...why is it called the Black Sea when it looks blue?..." and so on, at great length. I did wonder about a dictaphone, since I already use voice recognition software, but that requires privacy, and is consequently of limited use. Other people may regard it as okay to sit on the train and talk into a recorder - I don't. (Actually, there is something of a problem with the voice recognition set-up, as I always forget to turn off the radio, and my voice, dictating, gets muddled up with Jenni Murray talking about female innards, or Martha Kearney sounding like a slightly benign terrier as she makes some politician squirm.)

Well, late last year I took the plunge and bought one of these. There was a bit of a setback the first time I took it away with me - no longer attached by an umbilicus to the computer, it ceased to function, so that I found myself at a meeting, ready to take minutes, with nothing but digital paper, so I had to scrounge. Some protracted chasing of the supplier followed (I was put off buying it from Amazon by people who had trouble getting replacements, but in retrospect, I'd as soon fight with them as anyone else) and the new one eventually arrived just before Christmas, just when I didn't want to play with it.

The smart pen, which is a little on the fat side for comfort, writes on "dot paper" which you can even print yourself (though given the price of printer ink, I can't imagine there's much saving) or which can be bought in variously-sized numbered notebooks. When it's docked after writing, it uploads the used pages to your computer, where you can save them. As well as recording writing it can perform some computational functions and record sound (which is disconcerting when you turn it on by mistake and hear yourself wittering away).

One of my concerns was that the charge might not hold up for more than a day's meetings, but on a recent London trip I used it for several days without having to recharge. I could have recharged it with the laptop - it's just a USB connection to the charging "cradle" - but it's not really set up to use with more than one computer at a time, and I didn't want to compromise it on my first trip away from its parent. In fact, it can connect to more than one - you just have to remember that you must upload its information to both before deleting anything. Once the data is uploaded there is a web-based desktop to store it so that you can access it from anywhere. I must admit I haven't used this very sucessfully yet, but that may be a function of my hopeless broadband rather than a software failing. Social networking is available through this site, but that's not something I am likely to make much use of. Much more practical, from my point of view, is the associated OCR software which translates my scrawl into text that can be transferred to Word.

I've written a couple of blog posts with the pen - not this one - and minuted a number of meetings. My minuting style will have to undergo some change for me to turn the uploaded text into a proper record: I am having to remember not to use the abbreviations I spent years honing, and to write more clearly than I tend to: unlike the voice recognition software, the OCR doesn't learn my personal idiosyncrasies. (Of course, it wouldn't be any use at all if I wrote in shorthand, but happily, I never learnt.) Despite the fatness of the pen, I didn't notice my hand cramping more than usual after a day of writing. One thing you do have to watch - it rolls very readily. A number of reviewers reported having pens roll onto the floor, but this can be combated by wrapping a small elastic band round the top (unaesthetic) or just Being Very Careful (my preferred option, until it does barrel its way off a table, at which point I'll regret ignoring the advice).

Altogether, I'm reasonably pleased with it so far. Perhaps I should add that the pen comes in black (to match my clothes) or silver, with 2 and 4GB memories. I have no idea how the latter works in terms of everyday use, though I went for the 2GB version. I don't plan on using audio recording much, so I can't imagine it will be an issue. I'll try to remember to post an update later in the year. One caveat: they are pretty expensive, and I shouldn't think they are going to come down in price anytime soon. And I wonder if the new Android/Google phones might start to fulfill many of the functions before long.