Hello and Welcome Fellow Ramblers: Spring is on its way!

What a glorious day yesterday turned out to be! After the gales of Saturday, and the rainy Sunday, Monday had a promise of spring about it.

The dawn chorus got off to a good start with the song-thrush chortling away in the distant trees and the resident robin chirping its distinctive song in the garden. The flock of sparrows which visit the bird platform joined in from their perches in the hawthorn hedge. All this accompanied old sol as he ascended over the Lawley hill.

My LTA (long term attachment) and I even sat outside to enjoy our ‘elevensies’, namely a mug of Tetley tea! On the 17^th of January! Is this the lull before yet another ‘storm’? Having struggled through the coldest December for 120 years one wonders what January and February has in store for us considering that these are usually our ‘winter’ months.

On the pretext of delivering a birthday card to a friend I wandered along the country lane covering the mile or so to her house. The sun even had a slight warmth about it, although in the shade of the hedgerows it was damply chilly. Everywhere is very wet. Passing a field of sheep I felt sorry for them as they squelched and slithered in the vicinity of their feeding cratch, woolly coats caked in the offending mud. The lanes are muddy in places and liberally littered at intervals with dollops of farm ‘muck’ on its way to the fields, casually dropped from an overloaded spreader.

Nevertheless it was a joy to be out! I stood for a while beneath a tall hawthorn hedge while a red-breasted robin serenaded me with his beautiful song about a yard (a metre in new money) away from me. Spring must be around the corner.

Speak soon.

The Bumpkin Rambler xx      

Hello and Welcome Fellow Ramblers: Recycled nest boxes

Well at least the weather was a little milder yesterday. It was lovely to get outside. Even though I have lived in the country all my life I’m still a fair-weather person as far as the great outdoors is concerned.

The ‘green bin’ took the rest of the Christmas tree. It wasn’t a conventional one, at least not this year. It was one which had been growing over many years in a 3’ diameter pot on the lawn. It was small enough many years ago to warrant a festive seasonal place in the house, but had grown out of all proportion. (Not quite as big as the Griswald’s even so!!)

About a month before Christmas the rough winds had managed to topple the pot over and snap off the root as it had pushed its way through the bottom of the plastic as we had suspected. A sad end to a lovely fir!! It must have grown to about 10 feet high! And each year supported brambles which snaked their way through the branches and provided us with luscious blackberries.

Having been given some odd bits of wood recently I decided to do a bit more recycling, turning them into bird’s nest boxes. Having found a pattern in a gardening magazine I proceeded to draw the templates and cut them out of cardboard. Having drawn around the templates onto the wood the next job was to cut out the pieces with the electric jig-saw. (Donning the obligatory safety gear!)  Sanding them down was the next job...and I now need to shop for nails and screws to assemble the pieces into the finished article! Trouble is I’m like the late Freddie Mercury, ‘I want it all and I want it now’!! Once I have an idea in my head it has to be executed as soon as possible, if not sooner. But, like me the birds will have to be patient!

Speak soon!

The Bumpkin Rambler xx

        

Hello and Welcome Fellow Ramblers: 1960 winter trips to school

 Well, here we are one week already into the New Year. Yesterday we woke up to MORE snow, although thankfully it had thawed by evening. Even so, it was enough to be, once again, an inconvenience to early morning travellers.

Years ago, back in the early sixties, before the onslaught of ‘health and safety’, we endured as kids many hair-raising winter trips to school on the designated bus. The buses were owned by a local company and driven by the patriarch. Although the main purpose of the service was to ferry ‘big kids’ (between 11 and 15) to school there was always room inside to squeeze in the odd ‘paying’ traveller. It didn’t matter how full the bus was if there happened to be a potential fare paying customer waiting, room would be made!!

Kids would be made to sit three to a seat designed for two people, or even stand up for ‘their elders and betters’  as the familiar cry of ‘come on move up there, there’s plenty of room at the back’’ rang out. This was still the age of some chivalry, when people considered others and held open the occasional door!

With a bus full to overflowing we would trundle our way through the Shropshire lanes to the local Secondary Modern School! Some of the lanes en route were hilly and as the bus slithered its way towards another day of learning we would often end up half way up a slope at a standstill.

That was a sign for able bodied ‘boys’ to be required to help! This assistance came in the form of all of them disembarking and pushing the bus from behind! I don’t ever remember, unfortunately, not getting to school, so this juvenile muscle must have been sufficient to get us moving again. Imagine the horror and uproar that would cause today. After their exertion, the boys would get back on the bus blustering and ‘looking important’ as we all proceeded on to another day at school!

I was amazed yesterday by the appearance of a Greater Spotted Woodpecker at my bird platform. He was beautiful. I have seen him before at a distance in the oak tree in the adjoining field, but there he was helping himself to the peanuts!

And this week I have enjoyed the Stargazing Live programme hosted by Professor Brian Cox which has been on one of our BBC channels. I have learnt where to look in the sky to find the Pole Star and Orion and was just amazed at how much there is actually ‘out there’! How insignificant we are, not even a dot in the order of things.

Anyway that’s about it for now. Take care. Speak soon!

The Bumpkin Rambler xx