To build or not to build…
I should be writing about the progress of my building works, a dream becoming real, illustrated by photos of it happening in this amazing landscape, but thanks to the national situation it’s not possible and I turn my attention away from my forlorn concrete slabs to the landscape, binoculars permanently round my neck…
After watching a hooded crow on the shore a few weeks ago, repeatedly dropping a shell onto the rocks, I shouldn’t have been surprised a couple of weeks later. I was driving to town along the B-road and two hoodies flew up from the tarmac, leaving the roadkill of income sort lying there. It was small and as I passed I recognised it as a mussel. At this point loch and road are separated by a fringe of alder carr and yellow flowered skunk cabbage and depending on the tide it’s either water or mud – not a rock in sight. The road is the nearest hard thing, making the mussel a new kind of road kill and not quite what I’d expected. Perhaps I should have driven over the shell, saving the birds the effort of repeated drops. Perhaps I was meant to.
On my way ‘home’ I stopped the car and got out. Out of sight but nearby in its steep rocky bed, the Abhainn nan Gillean (Abhainn = avon = river) was loud and fat with recent rain. After an unusually long spell of fine dry weather the rain was welcome, some damp soft days with low cloud hiding the hills and persistent drizzle. All my new plants look better for it, the cuttings’ leaves expanding, new buds popping and the young transplanted trees looking perky. Fern fronds emerge from the raw soil, poking green where before there was nothing. Horizontal tips of buried trees pop out too, saplings knocked over, but not killed by the monster digger. If they continue to survive, the twigs on the upper sides will climb vertically towards the light, becoming stems or trunks on their near horizontal parent. This is repeated many times with wind thrown trees, even large ones.
Despite the upturned plate of roots, soil, rock and surprised accompanying plants, a few roots remain in the ground, doing their job. With these remaining roots and the tree’s stored energy, growth continues, leaves manufacture food and the recumbent trunk gives rise to young vertical growth. Tho old woodlands here are full of such trees. (‘traumatropism‘ apparently…)
New life is all around – black current and gooseberry twigs in a jug of water on the window sill are sprouting sharp creamy roots and the blackthorn has new buds. I watched a hen pheasant lead her solitary chick across the sandy plateau of Plot 1, pecking at invisible insects and in the rushy field corner by the road a roe deer skips away then pauses, unusually close, looking back repeatedly and intently, convincing me she’s left a fawn there. Her lingering gives me time to notice her dark brows, is this common or particular to this individual?
On the other hand life and death walk together and the blackbird’s nest in the ditch bank is suddenly empty. When I first saw the grassy cup it cradled three eggs and within days, three chicks. I watched for ten days, the chicks noticeably larger each day. Then they were gone. The season moves on. Woodpeckers still rattle and reverberate in the trees and a wood warbler flutters round its territory, from tree to tree, shivering its verdant song.
A sustainable house for unsustainable times... 