Category: in the woods

countryside · garden stuff · in the woods · wildlife

Properly Spring

Julie (little Cotton Rabbits)52 Comments

Well, it’s been a long time coming but Spring has arrived at last. Although the weather has still seemed a little undecided at times, the countryside around us here has been pressing ahead with new growth and everything is now transformed from dull, twiggy brown to bright acid green. I headed out to the orchard at Tewin earlier this week and there found beauty in many forms; blushed pink pear and apple blossoms; drifts of forget-me-knots shimmering in the breeze and ramsons (wild garlic) pungently carpeting the woodland all around the badger sett. Some of the ancient apple trees are covered in lichens and moss and look almost fossilised, creating an amazing contrast between the boughs and the delicate newly emerging leaves. The whole orchard was alive with birds and bees, everything busy with various stages of raising their next generation and it was the perfect tonic for the positivity problems I seem to have been struggling with lately.

It seems that many of us are feeling a little anxious and stressed so I know I’m not alone – the times we are living in seem to be full of peril, duplicity and deceit. For my own part I’m steering clear of the news for a while – and instead knitting, listening to music and reading more and just trying to appreciate some of the small and simple things. Recently the biggest mood improver for me has been a pair of robins choosing to nest in our garage. The nest has been built on top of some bottles of car wash and oil and we watched it grow, expertly crafted by the female alone while her mate provided her with food to keep up her strength. That was around a month ago and since then 5 or 6 eggs have been laid and at the beginning of last week they hatched. Because I’m a softy I ordered some live meal and wax worms and both the adults now fly down whenever I go out into the garden – they know that I have some tasty treats and it’s such an incredible privilege to be so close to them. Hopefully the chicks will fledge in around a week and will be safe in the garage for the few days before they find their wings so to speak – robin chicks usually leave the nest a few days before they learn to actually fly. I’ll let you know how they get on.

Sorry to be a bit down, I’ll try and be a bit more upbeat when I come back next time. I’ve had some gorgeous new yarn recently and have lots of knitting plans, so that will help!

Hope your days are happy this week x

countryside · in the woods

snowdrop spotting

Julie (little Cotton Rabbits)27 Comments

We’re very lucky where we live because although we’re in the middle of suburbia, we have very easy access to beautiful countryside. This time of year is snowdrop spotting time and it’s a delight to see carpets of them spread out beneath the bare-branched trees, the first cheerful herald of spring. One of the best places locally for them is around Westmill near Ware, which isn’t even a village but just a small handful of houses clustered around an old mill. The little path that leads past the houses and up alongside a quarry has great drifts of flowers on either side. I got cold muddy knees yesterday afternoon but it was worth it to get right down amongst them, close enough to see the dew still sparkling on their stems and their little bells silently shivering in the cold breeze.

The old mill straddles the River Rib and parts of the building still standing are said to date back to Elizabethan times, though there has been a mill on the site for at least 1,000 years. It’s a beautiful old building with wonderfully crumbly brick walls around the gardens and lovely views out over the water meadows. There’s a coat of arms in the middle of the front wall which appears to be the lesser coat of arms for the city of London, odd considering that we’re 20 miles from there and I wonder what the significance is but suspect that the facts have been lost to time. It is fascinating to live in a landscape that has so much visible history, Ware in particular as it is one of the longest continuously inhabited towns in Europe, so there’s a lot to discover.

The flowering of the snowdrops signals that spring is on the way (although winter has yet to loosen her frosty grip), which is a nice thought on a cold, dark and rainy early February evening. At this time of year I can’t help daydreaming of long-off summer afternoons with knitting in the garden and the snowdrops are a nice marker that we’re on our way back to those.

Be back soon with some knitty news, see you then x

 

countryside · general stuff · in the woods

Autumn in Panshanger Park

Julie (little Cotton Rabbits)42 Comments

 

Chewing sheep

 

Flock

 

Overhead

 

Dandelions

 

Sparkles

 

Oak trail

 

Parkland

 

Bench

 

Track

 

Orangery

 

Orangery2

 

Stonework roses

 

Stonework

 

Old oak2

 

Old oak

 

Old oak 3

 

Oak leaves

 

Leaf litter

 

Fungi

 

Leaf

 

Blackberries

 

Hips

 

Delicate

 

Sheep grazing2

 

Sheep grazing

 

Chewing

 

Sky

 

Looking back

Last week was the school half term break so most of my time was taken up with keeping Toby out of mischief. I did have a free day on the Wednesday though (when he went for respite care) and by happy coincidence this was the best day of the week weather-wise, so I packed up my backpack.

There is no shortage of places to choose from within a 15 minute drive and I count myself very lucky to be able to transport myself with relative ease to the woods, the canal, the lakes or the hills as the mood takes me. This time I headed to Panshanger Park. From the 1700s this parkland formed the grounds of a grand stately home but after the death of the last member of the Cowper family in the 1950's the main house was demolished and the estate divided up and sold by auction. Today the park is owned by Tarmac who extract minerals at one end of it. As each mining site is exhausted they have been returning the land to nature, so at the Hertford end of the park there is now a wonderful 400 hectare nature reserve crisscrossed by paths from which you can regularly see many species of ducks, dragonflies and wild birds including the occasional kingfisher and even osprey at the right time of year.

I walked through the fields of grazing sheep (who seemed quite curious about me photographing them), down the track towards the lake cottage and along the Mimram river for a bit before heading uphill to the site where the house once stood. At the hilltop there's a bench with a wonderful view designed by Humphrey Repton so I sat to eat my snack. From there I headed into the woods until the eerie sight of crumbling stonework appeared through the gaps between trees. The Orangery is all that remains of the original house – though if you scrabble about in the woods you can see the remains of walls and terraces which are being slowly reclaimed by nature – it's a bit like being on the set of a Lord of The Rings film. Following the path past the Orangery leads to a ring of iron railings encircling a gigantic oak tree…

"The park contains the largest maiden (not pollarded) oak in the country, with a circumference of 7.6 metres. It is believed to have been planted by Queen Elizabeth I. Acorns from the tree have been used as seedlings for notable oaks in other parts of the country, such as the Prince Consort Oak in the Forest of Dean. Winston Churchill planted a sapling from the tree in the park and the tree can still be seen in the grounds." (source Wikipedia)

I'm not sure that the pictures quite convey how massive this ancient oak is without anything for scale in the foreground but it is quite awe inspiring. I sat there for a while, quietly. All around I could hear small birds twittering about their business in the undergrowth. The squirrels were busy too with their store-cupboarding. There is a feeling of magic there (though that might be just me channelling my childhood love of reading The Tree That Sat Down and The Faraway Tree) and I look forward to returning through the changing seasons and visiting the peacefully enduring old oak.

I walked the path back to the car beneath dramatic skies. I've realised recently that late afternoon and that last golden hour before sunset is my favourite time of day and it really soothes my soul and dissolves stresses to be wandering about then. Even the tedious traffic jams to get back through rush-hour Hertford couldn't dent my sense of well-being.

Although autumn is undeniably here with cooler, breezier days and an abundance of berries and hips in the hedgerows, the leaves of many trees have yet to reach their full autumn glory, so I'm hoping for another wood walk later this week before leaf fall is complete.

See you soon and thanks as always for visiting x