The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
Winter’s grip holds firm for now but a closer look finds hints at warmer days
As I write this at the start of the week it’s not yet the end of January, the temperature is hovering on freezing, the ground is rock hard and puddles in the fields are frozen but it takes more than that to repress the early, urgent signs of spring.
Catkins are flowering on a hazel tree that Inka and I pass on our walks. Alders by the side of the burn across from the house have produced their heather-purple catkins. Horse chestnut trees are sprouting the sticky buds which will open out into the large leaves divided like the fingers of a hand and clusters of frothy white blossom.
The spuggies are a constant source of entertainment – always busy, always on the go. When they’re not hoovering up the seeds spilled from the bird feeders, I watch them coffee-shopping nineteen to the dozen among the bare branches of the old spreading hawthorn tree outside my study window.
It’s not too early to put out your nesting boxes, if only to provide the small songbirds in your garden with a warm roost for the night. Blue tits can start to pair up and investigate nesting sites early in the year but I suspect the cold weather will put them off for at least a month.
A robin lays claim to the front garden and another to the back. I scatter bird food on the front lawn but there’s more choice in the back garden which tempts the front garden robin to the back. It gets short shrift from the resident bird which puffs up its feathers and chases the intruder mercilessly back to where it came from. There’s nothing sweet and Christmas card about a robin when it gets its dander up. They are fiercely territorial and will fight to the death if necessary.
Green buds of butterbur looking like large rhododendron buds are poking their heads through the ground. They are one of the earliest wild flowers but won’t flower for at least a month. The pink flowering plant is native to Scotland but white butterbur is an introduction, locally common in Aberdeenshire, and I come across it quite often.
Keep your bird feeders well filled – you might be surprised by some of the visitors you get. Son James’ father-in-law, living in Edinburgh, has his feeders close to a leylandii hedge.
He noticed the fat ball feeder swaying wildly but no sign of any bird feeding. Keeping his eye on it, it swung round and there was a field mouse steadily chomping through one of the fat balls. It was light enough to run to the end of one of the
leylandii branches and leap across to the feeder.
Out walking with Inka, well happed up against the cold – me, that is – I remembered a story an uncle used to tell against himself. He grew up in a village near Edinburgh in Edwardian times, when the proprieties were more rigid than today. One chilly morning, aged about eight, he announced to his mother that there was “a terrible hoor frost outside”. It was quite a while before he understood why his world crashed about his ears.
Inka gets three walks a day – a short one in the morning and another, last thing, to shed a final tear for Nelson. In the afternoons we go out together for an hour’s tramp through fields or woods or somewhere near water.
I’m asked whether I’m tempted to forego the night-time walk when it’s freezing brass monkeys and, as we walk through a
silent, spectral countryside it’s so still I hardly like to raise my voice to call him in case I break the spell. Well, no. The walks have been ingrained in his internal time clock since he came to us and I should worry about what fragrant offerings might greet us in the mornings if he didn’t have that final run.
They are ingrained in my own internal time clock too. For over 50 years, three walks a day for dogs have been part of my daily routine. When we are away from home without Inka I miss the discipline of taking him out.
I make no apology for writing about Glenesk again. Mornings have been special when the hills we see from the garden have been lit up by lovely sunrises. I took myself up the glen to Tarfside and on to the Milton to see more.
The view was stunning – ahead of me an arc of snow-covered hills reached to the
horizon. The snow changes the character of everything, highlighting features you don’t normally notice.
It lifted my spirits to be in such a peaceful place.
I took some photographs and sat in the car reading my book until nippy fingers reminded me it was frosty up there. Time to go home for a bowl of the Doyenne’s warming homemade soup.
I make no apology for writing about Glenesk again