MAY DAYS BE MERRY and BRIGHT

I’ve always said that autumn is the time of year that I like best, followed by spring, winter and – very much last – summer. I can’t stand heat. (Not that heat has been a summer characteristic lately; we certainly never guessed that we might have log fires burning in successive Augusts). But high summer is horticulturally the dullest time of year, in my view. And slapping on sun cream is a chore that ranks with ironing shirts.

Now I am beginning to feel that May is the most glorious month of all. Of course living surrounded by a satisfyingly unkempt garden and lots of trees and a field that is slowly being turned into a meadow means that May is more noticeable than it used to be when we lived in the city. It’s a dirty job, gracious living, but someone’s got to do it. And rather us than Tory grandees claiming public funds to have the wisteria removed from the garage roof and pipes re-laid under the tennis court.

As I slide into my dotage, it is the transience of May’s delights that tugs at the heartstrings too: the “blossomingest blossom” that the dying Dennis Potter could see from his bedroom window. Blossom doesn’t survive long, especially when it’s wet and windy. Today, like the weekend just past, is blustery between the showers but much holds on with gritted teeth, both flora and fauna. As I write, our lilacs are coming to the end of their brief span of glory. We have all three shades – dark, pale and white – vying with each other and with an ancient laburnum that is also in its full pomp, sharply contrasting with its brilliant yellow flowers (so much more arresting than the common-as-muck forsythia of early spring).

The apple and cherry blossom are done now and the magnolia so long gone it’s almost forgotten. But the late flowerers stand proud against the gale, especially the hawthorn which of course is also known as may. The old rhyme “Here we go gathering nuts in May” is really a rewrite of the notion of the nuts of the may tree – so it should be “nuts of may” – because of course there are no native plants that produce nuts in the spring. Our hedgerows – two sides of the field have full hedges – are full of white hawthorn, while square on to our conservatory is a red hawthorn, its carmine flowers just this side of full vulgarity. Its covering is at its height now. Next to the red hawthorn is an old and doubtless doomed pear tree into which David has allowed a pale pink Clematis Montana to climb. The clematis is in its best fig now. Another one, clean white, climbs along the house under the window of the shower room so that you dry yourself while gazing on the vista of the three lilacs and the laburnum with the white clematis framing the view. Elsewhere the honeysuckle has kicked in so that twilight invites a heady stroll through the garden, reeling from one outrageous perfume to the next.

Also close to the conservatory is an ash. Ashes are the property’s most numerous trees – we have not flinched to have one or two taken down for they seed promiscuously – and they are always the last to come into leaf. So while the fruit bearers and our gorgeous tulip tree – my favourite; we planted it to mark the millennium – are in full leaf, the acers are not far behind and even the tardy oaks are now well covered, the ashes still have the look of winter about them. Nothing undaunted, a pair of nuthatches are raising a brood in the long-established nesting box in the ash, despite having so little cover for their duties. We keep an eye out for magpies, crows, woodpeckers, squirrels and other predators of fledglings but we can’t manage a guard right through the hours of daylight. I feel protective towards them yet when we lived in town I wouldn’t have recognised a nuthatch if it jumped up and pecked me on the leg. Now I can tell one just from its flight, never mind needing to see one still and in repose and relative close-up.

The robins seem to have finished their child-rearing duties for the time being. They build against an outbuilding wall under the aforementioned Clematis Montana. We’ve seen fewer wrens obviously foraging this year. Maybe they nest later. Last spring we installed a so-called sparrow parade near the eaves in a roof gully. Sparrows prefer communal living. But I think we started too late and this year, at the crucial time, we had roofers up there, enough to put off any would-be nester. But sparrows have been as noticeable by their absence here as anywhere else. Does putting up a dedicated nesting box bring them in? Or do they need to be here first before the box is going to be spotted? It’s perhaps instructive that we put up a box specifically designed for nuthatches and tree creepers on the old oak, further away from our busy bird-feeders, yet the nuthatches opted for a generalised box that is on the main strip and not well protected. You can take a horse to water, you might say, but you can’t make it drink.

“What potent blood hath modest May” Emerson wrote. It is indeed a time of energy and promise. Wild deer sometimes venture into our field, despite the menace of our dogs. The fish are at last rising in the pond, having passed half a year in suspended animation near the bottom – and that’s twelve feet down. Already Ron the heron has visited several times, planning where he’ll stand to have the best chance of spearing something. I don’t rate his chances though we shall remain vigilant. But if last year’s kingfisher returns, I shall not begrudge him anything small that he can manage. He’s much too magical to resent.