Blossoming:Beltane notes from the Hill of the Poets

I began writing this on Earth Day, as we are just hitting peak blossom on the Hill of the Poets. The damson is over but the cherries, including my favourite, the bird cherry, with its dangling sprays of white flowers, are fully out, and the apple blossom is open. In one of the many reinventions this town has had, it was known as the Orchard Quarter, and you can still find random apple trees along roadsides, as well as community orchards planted wherever a space is left alone for long enough. Blossom here is lavish.

We have other flowers in abundance too - gorse bushes, celandines, violets, lady’s smocks and cowslips. I think some of these are deliberately planted along roadside verges, as they are in Ayrshire, where it is the county flower. There will be white dead nettle shortly, too, red campion and garlic mustard, but very few bluebells. The clump of wild arum under the beech trees is growing, and spreading, and the patch of silverweed which was devastated by schoolchildren forcing a path, and by the estate manager’s ruthless use of herbicide, has made a spectacular comeback.

Birds are nesting. I have spotted two pairs of robins, a pair of blackbirds and the usual cohort of sparrows, blue tits, starlings, magpies and pigeons. There are chiffchaffs close by, and finches of various kinds visit occasionally, but there has been no sign of the woodpeckers this year. Migrants have arrived later than ususal, the first chiffchaff did not arrive until well into April, but yesterday the housemartins showed up in a wheeling cloud over the main road. I am so relieved to see them back.

The garden has suddenly powered up, weeds like willowherb growing three inches and putting out new leaves almost overnight, and I have found three plants I thought had succumbed to cold and wet - verbena bonariensis, bergamot and dittany. The dittany was the biggest surprise. It’s a Mediterranean herb, and I had my doubts whether I could even grow it here, but I put it in the magical garden as an experiment, and was delightfully surprised to find it showing its first shoots just beside the mugwort and vervain. I have started my first herb harvests, chives for the freezer and violet leaf oil. We have a disgraceful number of nettles flaunting their brass-necked impudence among the wallflowers and catnip but I have let them go this year.

Writing has been a little less focussed over the Easter holidays, partly because of being in church so much, but mostly because I have revived the Burnedthumb blog. I really missed the short-form responses to what’s going on that I used to do, and as I bring the poems together to create the entity that makes the next book, I find I have a bit to say about the research behind it that I want to share. You can find the first post here, and the second will be out soon, reflecting on hauntings, the witness of history and the phenomenon of ‘the other’, the shadow that informs our relationship with where we live. Going forward there will be more reflective posts, poetics, or ecological ones, and, I hope, reviews of books. My reading lately has been scrappy, but I read Pat Boran’s Hedge School on a recommendation from The Friday Poem and really enjoyed it, and also Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Serviceberry. If you know Braiding Sweetgrass you will have an idea what to expect, but this book is shorter, and beautifully illustrated. My only reservation is that I have tried Serviceberries (also called Saskatoons - you can get bushes from Appletreeman -) and I wasn’t impressed. They were rather mealy and flavourless - perhaps they weren’t fully ripe.

I did a short reading at Cambuslang Library for World Poetry Day, which was very kindly received, and next week I’m going to do one in Stirling for the members of NeuroCentral - a support group for people with neurological conditions. I haven’t promoted it, because it’s members only, but perhaps you know groups which would like me to come and read or talk? I can even do writing workshops, if there’s a demand.

I hope your blossoming time is lavish. I can’t help worrying about the darkness in the world, and how it seems to be changing our politics too, but I am encouraged by the shoots of resistance, as people stand up for the kindness they have always practised, and the decency we demand from our society. Beltane used to be known for an absolute festival of love what with all the nesting and blossoming and rearing young things we see around us, and we will not be thwarted by greed and cruelty and fear. I am all for the blossom!

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