Countryside colours blaze

Ireceived a newly published book through the post, sent to me by the author John Bennett and titled The Summer Crew. It’s the fictional story capturing the events and characters in the close world of a salmon fishing crew who operated a sweep net on the River Spey. Known as net and coble fishing, it’s a method of fishing going back at least to the 12th Century. The author “worked an oar” on a coble for a fishing season on the Spey at the end of the 1980s, so he writes from experience.

It’s a world I’ve known a little about all my life and written about in this column, so I recognised the world Bennett describes. For those who don’t, a helpful appendix on Salmon and Salmon Netting gives an explanation of the life cycle of salmon and of a culture and a way of life now almost consigned to history.

John Bennett writes in his native Morayshire Doric dialect and he has thoughtfully included a glossary of unfamiliar words. It’s an entertaining read to help pass the hours and days while we loosen the shackles of lockdown.

Wee buzzer

Frantic cries of “No, Inka, no” had me galloping through to the house thinking that Inka had disgraced himself on the kitchen floor. But the Doyenne was stopping him from eating a bumble bee which was walking purposefully in the back door. By the time I got there the bee was buzzing wildly on the window trying to fly out. I deftly caught it in a glass and released it into the garden.

I well remember when Inka One, this one’s grandfather, got a wasp up his nose. I just about laid an egg. For several horrible moments I was paralysed, not knowing what to do. If he had started to paw his muzzle to get rid of the wee buzzer he might have been stung. You hear of humans reacting badly to wasp stings – how might it affect a dog in such a tender spot.

By the grace of the gods that protect dogs the wasp decided it didn’t care for the strange, dark orifice and it crawled out and flew off.

Cuckoo spit

Look out for the white, frothy blobs appearing at this time on tall grasses and known as cuckoo spit, one of nature’s great misnomers. Cuckoos don’t spit and the blobs are the secretion of the tiny nymphs of sapsucking insects called frog hoppers. They are nothing to do with frogs and they don’t hop, although the adults do. It’s another wonder of nature that something so small can create such copious amounts of spit – a bit like spiders spinning endless threads of silk.

Weather warning

Keep an eye on the weather next Wednesday, the 15th of the month and St Swithin’s Day. An old rhyme gives due warning of what we may expect:

St Swithin’s Day if thou dost rain, For forty days it will remain. St Swithin’s Day if thou be fair,

For forty days ‘twill rain nae mair.

The good saint was Bishop of Winchester and a man of great humility. He instructed that on his death he should not be buried inside the church like other bishops, but outside where he might be “subject to the feet of passersby, and to the raindrops pouring from on high”.

A hundred years after his death, the clergy decided to reinter him and moved his remains inside the cathedral. This so displeased the old boy’s spirit that a violent rainstorm broke out which lasted 40 days.

It’s another folk tale like red sky at night, shepherd’s delight, but

“

I well remember when Inka One, this one’s grandfather, got a wasp up his nose. I just about laid an egg

remember weatherman Michael Fish’s confident pronouncement that no storm was imminent which was followed by the worst storm in living memory to hit the south coast of England. So keep your fingers crossed.

Resplendent roadsides

Roadside verges, woodland margins and field boundaries are bursting with wildflowers – swathes of colour from sticky willie’s tiny, star-shaped flowers and yellow and blue field pansies, to blowsy Queen Anne’s lace and frothy meadowsweet. June and July are the months for pink and white dog roses.

Retired Montrose GP

Dr Andrew Orr got in touch to tell me about the wildflower meadow just outside Brechin on the back road to East Drums and Ardovie. It’s clearly a cultivated meadow, but 70 years ago they were quite common as permanent pasture. This one’s a blaze of colour and brought back memories of walking through the tall grasses and flowers as a child, especially when visiting aunts and uncles in Midlothian.

Picture: Dr Andrew Orr. The meadow resplendent with flowers just outside Brechin on the back road to East Drums and Ardovie.