Mangled

At 8am an anguished rusty mangle cried in the distance. Intrigued, I went to my window just in time to catch a couple of geese flying past, but not in time to work out which species.

Today's outing was to the Malverns, walking most of the length from Hollybush to Worcestershire Beacon, and down via St Ann's Well to Great Malvern. Worcestershire Beacon is the highest point, but at only 425m is no mountain. On the other hand, what with all the ups and downs, I reckon we probably climbed the equivalent of a mountain. So now I feel like an anguished rusty mangle! The weather was good: excellent for walking, but the visibility not quite good enough to see Mucknell. The bluebells were stunning above Hollybush, and there is also a good display above Wynds Point. And the broom is out, to rival the oil seed rape for sheer yellowosity.

Royalty

Any republican tendencies were largely buttoned up as we sat around the TV to watch the Royal Wedding. The trees in the aisle were six field maples and two hornbeams, and all the flowers were seasonal and English, a good example of sustainability! However, Landcare Research of New Zealand did some research on the carbon footprint of the wedding, as requested by the Daily Telegraph. Answer, a lot, but much much less than the horrifying figure for the World Cup 2010.

In the afternoon I potted out some Royalty dwarf french beans. I thought it ironic that there should be a Royalty dwarf french bean, but Thomas suggested that Napoleon I would have qualified.

Journeys

Another outing, this time to Alison's parish near Bath. The church has a square labyrinth in floor tiles, laid in the southwest corner in 1985, and based on the original in the Abbey of St Bertin, Saint-Omer, France. This image is of the angel rolling away the stone, one of a series of Stations of the Resurrection around the edges of the church.

We sang Vespers of Easter with Alison's congregation, and they made us very welcome with tea and large quantities of cake. The hawthorns along the M5 are laden with flowers on their southwest branches and are bare on the northeast.

Stumps

James is here to stake out the specimen trees and spray round the whips that he and the others planted this spring. (Spraying required by the Forestry Commission grant, and I hope with nothing more sinister than glyphosate.) We found him in the morning filling large tanks with water. All the trees are desperately in need of rain, but it's only viable to water the specimens. Looking into the forest of green tubes, most of this year's and last autumn's whips have put effort into some leaves and blossom, and need rain to be able to sustain it. Some have already died, either from lack of rain or the extreme winter cold, or from being gnawed by voles; Anthony has found quite a few vole nests at the base of the tubes.

In Easter week, the timetable becomes a bit fluid. A group of us went down to Oxford for a tour of the Bodleian library (150 miles of shelf space in its new book repository in Swindon, most of which will be taken up with editions of Barbara Cartland), with Exeter College (founded in the same year as Bannockburn) and other sites thrown in. I took the opportunity to go to the Ghost Forest outside the University Museum, at the other end of the spectrum from our whips. Ours are temperate broadleaf forest, as native as possible to the UK. The Ghost Forest comprises ten primary rainforest tree stumps from Ghana. Ours are thin and incipient. The Ghost Forest stumps are fallen trunkless giants. But they are/were all vulnerable, and they are highlighting sustainability.

The Ghost Forest "is intended to highlight the alarming depletion of the world's natural resources, and in particular the continued rate of deforestation. Today, a tropical forest the size of a football pitch is destroyed every four seconds, impacting on climate, biodiversity and the livelihoods of indigenous people. The trees in Ghost Forest - most of which fell naturally in storms - are intended to represent rainforest trees worldwide; the absence of their trunks is presented as a metaphor for the removal of the world's lungs caused through the loss of our forests."

Hoe down

More tomato seedlings are coming up, and it looks as though Moneymaker will be Reasonable-return-on-our-investment after all. I've pricked most of them out, most of the sweet peppers, and all the brassicas. The beans and squashes are doing brilliantly, and I've potted them on ready for hardening off and planting out when the danger of frost is over and IF AND WHEN WE EVER GET SOME RAIN!!! While the tomatoes are getting a bit bigger, I've planted out the Bughatti and Belize lettuces in the greenhouse bed. We have a marvellous irrigation system that produces slow drips every foot, so one of each lettuce has gone in either side of each drip, and they seem to be thriving. The Asparagus lettuces are waiting a bit longer to go outside.

The Great Weevil Slaughter continues, and I've also taken a hoe to the weeds around the rhubarb and fruit bushes. Anthony and Luke have been discomdockerating and discomthistleating (these may be made-up words) all week, with sterling help from our Holy Week and Easter guests. More obviously creatively, I've been sorting out my photos for potential cards, Sue (the nun formerly known as Gabriel formerly known as Sue) has been at her painting desk, and today a mysterious group of stones appeared in the courtyard. Who moved them?

The problem of weevils

I have the blood of a hundred weevils on my hands; they are chomping the plum and pear tree leaves, and must needs be squashed. The lesser of the two weevils are dark grey, and the others shine an iridescent copper. Yet who would have thought the old pests to have had so much blood in them? Green blood at that, from all the chlorophyll they've ingested. What, will these hands ne'er be clean? Here's the smell of the blood still.

I have also been trying to take some close-up photos of plants and flowers, which is not easy in a changeable wind. I took a blurry photo of a dandelion clock, then when I was setting myself again, along came a gust and away went my subject. But here is one I'm quite pleased with.

Easter eggs

I often now see a lapwing on parade near the lowest swale. A bird that in flight switches black and white, closer to reveals plumage of blues, greens and purples. We suspect that a pair is nesting and may already have young; they get very agitated when approached, but the young are well-camouflaged and well-nigh impossible to see. We are lucky to have a nest, and to see more pairs in the field beyond, as numbers have dwindled drastically in the UK in past years. Lapwings have been given 'Red status' by the RSPB, which is the highest conservation priority given to species needing urgent action.

According to Rebecca Hosking, she of Farm for the Future and based in Modbury, says there is now only one pair nesting in Devon. Farming practices and the Victorians nearly wiped it out, but ironically it has benefits to farming, ridding pastures of pests. And it has seasonal significance, possibly being the origin of the Easter egg hunt and the Easter bunny: "Lapwings classically inhabit the same territories as hares and make a scrape of a nest on the ground; in fact, quite often a lapwing will hijack a hare's form and lay eggs in it. So you can forgive country folk of old for stumbling upon a lapwing nest with hare droppings in it or accidently flushing a hare and finding a lapwing nest and coming to the conclusion that hares laid eggs." And so Hosking tells us we should salute our nesting pair, so I duly got out my binos again and did just that.

And three Easter eggs to wish you a joyful Easter:

• A six-year-old girl writes a letter to God, and the Archbishop of Canterbury answers
• Banksy-style graffiti of Jesus' life from Beulah URC in Rhiwbina, Cardiff
• The story of the 'good thief' in Anime

Waiting

Another calm and hot day, and the calm got calmer and the heat heavier. Temperatures almost reached 25 °C in Pershore yesterday and today. One of the three swallows has found the bat portal, and is defending it against all comers. The other two have been inspecting the recesses of the maintenance yard, and have taken to perching in the rafters of the main entrance where they sit and chitter, or just sit. It is a delight to watch them twisting and turning into the correct angle for approach and docking, or skimming the roofs inches from disaster, but it was almost too hot to stay out for long. Then the wind got up at about 5.30pm, northeasterly at ground level, but the clouds aloft were moving slowly from the west. Turbulence at ground level often means that the wind direction is different, but in this case it seemed to indicate wind shear, a fair amount of energy in the atmosphere, and the possibility of a thunderstorm. And sure enough, the thunder started over Malverns way at 6pm.

We have an early start tomorrow - the Easter Vigil begins at 4.40am. The forecast is for rain overnight - the garden needs it - and fine when we need it.

Good Friday

Roger Wagner, "Menorah", 1993
"When I first saw Didcot power station through the window of a train from Oxford to Paddington, the smoke belching from the central chimney reminded me more of a crematorium than a symbol of God’s presence. And yet having said that, the astonishing sky behind the towers looked like the arch of some great cathedral, while something in the scale of the cooling towers themselves, with the light moving across them and the steam slowly, elegiacally, drifting away, created the impression that they were somehow the backdrop of a great religious drama."     >>> More >>>

Burdensome

The "greenest government ever" (sic) is at it again. It's reviewing the Climate Change Act, National Parks Act, Clean Air Act and the Wildlife and Countryside Act and other regulations designed to protect wildlife, tackle pollution, protect the countryside, and reduce climate change... because they might be "burdensome" to business. And by "review", it means: "the default presumption will be that burdensome (sic) regulations will go. If Ministers want to keep them, they have to make a very good case for them to stay."

Meanwhile, the government has issued a smog alert for Easter weekend. Bah! Who needs the Clean Air Act anyway? And farmers are desperate for rain and face imminent water restrictions due to the hot and dry spell. But so what if climate change means this sort of weather becomes more frequent? And the South Downs National Park was only established on 1 April. But what's the point of a "biodiverse landscape" or an "area of outstanding beauty"? Let's build on them all.

So there's another short petition to sign. Just 2 minutes of your time. Hopefully not too burdensome. Thanks.

Generation game

The sun is shining, and here's a chart of how our solar panels have been doing since November. We can get information on the kWh of electricity generated by the photovoltaics, but we don't have any information on kWh generated by the solar thermal panels. Instead, the number of hours of pump operation acts as a proxy; the pump operates when the temperature of the circulating fluid in the panels is more than 2 °C higher than the temperature of the solar hot water cylinder.

The design documents included some figures for expected electricity generation by month. So far, the PVs have done as well as or better than expected, and we're on course to beat April as well... not particularly surprisingly.

Wise words

The potatoes are in: two brands of meat-and-two-veg potato, and pink fur apple potato for salads. After the fact, I found some advice on planting PFA on a forum: "Just make a hole, bung 'em in." Which is pretty much what I did, except that I made sure that the hole was about 5 inches deep, and the sprouts were heading roughly to the light. The bean and squash seedlings are playing grandmother's footsteps, springing up or growing an inch when your back is turned. But the tomatoes aren't being as successful as we hoped, and we are unlikely to have 1 billion seedlings by the end of April.

I have audited the mature hedge on the south side, finding a dogwood among the usual suspects of hawthorn, rose, blackthorn, bramble, hazel, field maple and elder, and two mystery trees which are still in bud. The hawthorn which came into leaf early is now also the first to blossom. So as the May is out, feel free to cast a clout... unless you subscribe to the theory that 'May' refers to the month.

And a new proverb that I'd like to coin: It only takes one crow to chase off a buzzard.

X

My postal vote has just gone in the, well... post. In the local elections I had only two candidates to choose between: Con and LibDem. In the AV referendum, I had only two choices: No and Yes. So it doesn't matter which voting system will be used to count my votes. Oh well.

In 2009, the BBC politics department did a thought experiment regarding which voting system to use in a referendum on which voting system to use. The options available were: the current First Past the Post system (FPTP), the Alternative Vote (AV), the Single Transferable Vote (STV), and Borda, a points-based system. They supposed that there were 100 voters, who 'happened' to be divided into four opinion groups, with their order of preference for the voting system as follows:

No of voters	1st	2nd	3rd	4th
28	FPTP	Borda	AV	STV
27	AV	STV	Borda	FPTP
24	STV	AV	Borda	FPTP
21	Borda	STV	FPTP	AV

So if FPTP was used to count the result of the referendum, it would win; if AV was used it would win; if STV was used it would win; and if Borda was used it would win. Overall result: an amusing and interesting story. The trouble is, the BBC rigged the opinion groups to get the result they wanted. In reality there could be up to 24 rows in the above table and any combination is possible. For example, still using their four opinion groups, but swapping the 2nd and 4th preferences of the 24 voters who put STV first, would give FPTP the victory.

Paul Vallely cited this in a recent blog post, but of much more interest is the following part of his article: "there is no simple correlation between the number of MPs and the voting power they command in practice... A small party can be as powerful as a much larger one, or utterly powerless, depending on how the coalitions fit together... The Liberal Democrats may have got fewer seats than Labour but they got more power because they joined the government. Lib Dem voters got some power; Labour voters got none."

So AV is probably a red herring. But it's important to me to exercise my hard-won right to vote freely in local, national and European elections, and then to try to influence whoever turns out to be my councillors, MP and MEPs. Yesterday was Palm Sunday, and in the reading of the Passion according to Matthew, we heard Pilate asking the crowd to vote: " 'Whom do you want me to release for you, Jesus^* Barabbas or Jesus who is called the Messiah?' " (Matt 27:17; NRSV).

The blues

When I see a bird, plant or insect, and try to identify it in a book or on the web, I generally assume that if there's a choice, it'll be the most common option. Hence, when I saw a blue butterfly, and found that there is a Common Blue, the commonest blue found in the British Isles, I thought that would probably have been the one. Until I looked at the annual cycle: "In good years, adults may be seen as early as the middle of May on more southerly sites." Probably not in the middle of April in the midlands, then. Of all the blues, the only one that is usually adult in April is the Holly Blue, which is still pretty common, but has a nice name so is more interesting. The blue of its wings reflected the cloudless spring sky. And close-up in the photos, they really are incredibly beautiful, with fine feathery outlines to their wings, and zebra-crossing legs and antenae.

In the early evening, the linnets were going a bit mental in the cut, which is probably acting fairly normally. The grass seemed serene, until I caught some movement out of the corner of my binocular lenses. And focusing, I could catch all sorts of raucous goings on: domestics, stealthy trespassing, neighbours' disputes, sudden eruptions, nipping off for a pint. I looked away for a few minutes, researching the blues, and when I looked back, I thought the three new specimen trees had grown large brown autumnal leaves. The branches were heaving with linnets, and what looked like a reed bunting hanging out with them. And then they were as suddenly off, exeunt right.

Black & white & green

In the early evening, I stood waiting for the lesser whitethroat in the hedge by the orchard. I saw something that might answer, but at a distance, and I can't be sure of its song, either. I had more success walking slowly down to cowslip corner past the pond. I thought I'd seen the last of the wheatears, but I found another (the same?) male on a pile of flagstones. And I lay on my back on the mown path by the cowslips, and listened to a blackcap singing in the hedge, a lovely melodious song, pitched somewhere between blackbird and robin. On the way back to supper, the swallows were dipping the pond again, not drinking but picking off insects near the surface. Perhaps that was what they were doing yesterday too.

Yesterday I walked the northern side edges, and audited the mature hedge: mostly hawthorn and roses, bramble, blackthorn, hazel, willow and pussy willow, punctuated by ash, elder, field maple, and the occasional wild cherry. When I've done the southern side, I'll have a good idea of where best to find raw materials for potions. Today I inspected the new hedging; I haven't looked closely for a few weeks. Along the section near the pond, it is in leaf and swelling up against its clear plastic protective cover, much like the bursting of Dr Bruce Banner into the Incredible Hulk.

Egg shells

I have found another broken egg shell near the pond. This and last week's were palest green, similar in size to a hen's egg, and almost certainly mallard. And they were almost certainly predated; today's had very clear peck marks. The normal mallard clutch is about twelve eggs. I hope the female is still incubating the other ten, and we will see duckings on the pond soon.
 
As I pondered the mallard egg, two of the swallows swept around me, drinking on the wing from the pond. They chose the privacy of the water on the other side of island from where I was standing, so I couldn't see the actual drinking. But I googled for images, and found this impressive photo. There are often three swallows on the kitchen garden wall, which bring to mind the traditional Scottish children's song "Three craws sat upon a wa'". But from what I've learnt over these past months, crows tend to go about singly or in pairs, and I would expect the third craw also wisna' there at a'.

Video diary

It seems like a good idea to take regular photos and videos from the same spot, to see how Mucknell changes over time. So far I've shot two videos, both 360° pans around the north side of the estate, from roughly the same spot on the bank above the garth.

The first I shot on 7 November 2010, shortly after we moved in. It has no commentary and was very hand-held.



The second was on 8 April, i.e. about a week ago, with some basic explanatory commentary and zoomed in slightly. I tried using a tripod this time, but unfortunately it judders very noisily, and I kicked it at one point! So no Oscars for me any time soon, but maybe there's a Razzie for worst home video.



The main changes that I can see are: the main doors had not been hung in November; there are extra green tubes of tree-planting; the autumnal colours have become spring green and blossom; the grass has grown a bit; and oil seed rape has appeared in the garth. So I'm not sure we're going to see any dramatic changes; it'll be a bit like watching trees grow. I might try a couple in the courtyard and the south side, reverting to my steady hand cam.

Music of the stars

Forget dendrochronology, there's a new compound -ology in town: astroseismology.

The new Kepler telescope is designed to measure tiny fluctuations in stars' brightness. Stars are giant balls of gas, which is continually in motion, and the massive movement of gas creates great pressure waves, effectively sound waves of very low frequency. As these sound waves resonate within a star, they slightly change both the brightness and the colour of the star's light. Kepler can detect these changes, and by working backwards, scientists can deduce information about the sound waves and the star.

Like a musical instrument, bigger stars create sound waves at lower pitches. And there are also harmonics in the signal, which indicate the depth of origin of the sound waves, and the amount of hydrogen or helium they passed through. The sounds are thousands of times lower than we can hear. They can of course be speeded up, but it doesn't sound any more like "Twinkle twinkle".

Crawtraes and Palsywort

There are flowering Agraphis nutans, Auld Man's Bell, Calverkeys, Common Bluebell, Crawtraes, Endymion non-scriptum, English Bluebell, Granfer Griggles, Hyacinthoides non-scripta, Jacinth, Ring-O'-Bells, Scilla non-scripta, Wilde Hyacint and Wood Bells down in the south-eastern hedge, next to the Artetyke, Arthritica, Bainne Bó Bleachtáin, Butter Rose, Cowslip, Crewel, Cuhacicegi, Drelip, Fairy caps, Gulden Sleutelbloem, Herba Sancti Petri, Key Flower, Key of Heaven, Mayflower, Our Lady's Keys, Paigle Peggle, Palsywort, Password, Petty Mulleins, Plumrocks, Primavera, Primula officinalis Hill and Primula veris, Seiyo-Sakura-So and Yellow Star Of Bethlehem.

Which is to say that the bluebells are out, in the corner next to the cowslips. I didn't have time to have a good look round for any others, but it's lovely to see them; a beautiful deep violet set in the deep-green shade of the hedge, contrasting with the bright yellows studding the sunlit grass. The non-scripta or non-scriptum part of the bluebell's botanical names means "unlettered" or "unmarked", but seemingly not unnamed, or unremarked by me at least.

Listen now again.

I sat in the courtyard to drink my morning cuppa and watch three swallows chittering and fighting acrobatically. I suspect three constitutes a crowd. Sadly (for them) the sewing room is more weatherproof than this time last year, and no longer available as a nidification* site. Over the past few days, they have been flying round and round the building trying to find it. Now I think they have given up, and just rest on the roof of the utility room nearby. We have plenty of other options for them. I think the car port might be suitable, which will mean finding some strategic plastic sheeting.

After a spell of glorious glorious weather, it clouded over and got windy in the afternoon. But today's frontal rain passed to the north of us. We might get a spot overnight, or on Wednesday or Friday. I thought I'd mention Seamus Heaney's "The Rain Stick" at this point, and just found it published in an American medical journal. More poetry in scientific and medical publications, please. Thank you.

* Nesting; learnt from Gilbert White. Why use a common Anglo-Saxon word when a polysyllabic Latinate alternative suffices?

Enough already!

I finally got round to planting out the gift of welsh onions that have been heeled in for weeks. We've been doing some more sowing: the dwarf french beans went mouldy so another lot of those, some runners, more squash. The poor tomato seedlings are wilting as the greenhouse is so hot, despite the super-duper auto-opening skylights. We could really do with a bit less sun and a bit more rain.

The lapwings were continuing to mark out their territory, but I haven't seen Mr & Mrs Wheatear recently. in the morning, there was a pair of canada geese down by the lower swale. A pair nested on the island in the pond last year, but this year there are ducks instead. The pond itself is crawling with common or smooth newts. Bizarre to realise that what looks like and moves like a small brown fish also has little legs.

Being observant is getting more tiring, partly because there is so much to see. I haven't mentioned the brimstone, peacock, tortoiseshell and multifarious white butterflies; the budding oaks; the blossom on the crab apples, an apple, and the wild cherry in the hedge; the stacked willow cords starting to grow; etc etc. But also, in the Myers-Briggs typology, I very strongly favour intuition over sensing as my way of gathering and interpreting information. I tend to get an impression of a room or a landscape, and don't notice the detail. Being observant is hard work. So sitting at the base of the solitary oak this afternoon, I just relaxed into the warm, sunny day, and let it all wash over me.

The sunset was pale, even though the sky overhead was deep blue; the sun was misted out enough to be seen with the naked eye. Stuart dubbed it an 'apophatic sunset'. Discuss.

Lights, no camera, action, cut

When I walk around the estate, I usually do just that, walk around. Other than cutting the occasional corner, and walking around the swales, I rarely criss-cross. So dock-slicing has led me on a rare excursion into the cut and among the newly-planted trees on the bank. In the bright summery sunshine, the cut responds with a galaxy of dandelions. I disturbed a hare on the western side, and watched it run diagonally across. Earlier, I'd found a mass of forget-me-nots by the pond. The place has changed dramatically in less than a month.

Just before Vespers, there were a couple of lapwings hunting for a nesting site in the cut. Proudly erect, they paraded a few steps, and stopped, and paraded again. They stepped closer on parallel lines, then both turned away through right-angles, proceeded a few steps, turned, tracing a stately dance, much like two of Jane Austen's grand persons wearing the latest fashion in hats to a ball.

God in the dock

There are docks everywhere, but mostly on the disturbed earth. So I spent a cathartic hour with a spade in the morning sunshine, slicing the tops off any dock that crossed my path.

When I was a child, I saw dock as the beneficial plant that grew next to nettles and provided the salve for any stings. Now it's more complicated. I partly see them as an even worse weed than nettles, being even harder for the kichen and landscape gardener to eradicate. They are even designated an "injurious weed" under the UK Weeds Act 1959*. But they also have a beneficial effect on the soil; their roots go deep down, breaking up any compacted soil and bringing minerals up to the surface. I left the leaves where I sliced, so that the minerals go back to the topsoil. In fact, on very compacted sites, permaculture books advise planting dock on purpose. I haven't got to the bit where they explain how then to get rid of it. Rumex obtusifolius indeed. But anyway, God is in the dock, and the nettles, and the cabbages, and the heartsease.

* Along with curled dock, creeping thistle, ragwort and spear thistle; but who knew there was a UK Weeds Act 1959? The things I found out writing this blog!

Sleep

Tonight sees the premiere of Eric Whitacre's Virtual Choir 2.0, singing his composition Sleep. He spoke about the project at TED in March: the "creative challenges of making music powered by YouTube"; and the community that Sleep, and the previous project Lux aurumque, seemed to generate among people from all over the world, despite having never met each other or even been in contact with each other, except that they were all following Eric's conducting video and would one day be joined into a thing of beauty.

Do watch and listen to Sleep. It's a piece of a dreamlike quality, not easy to sing because of the breath control required. I performed it many times with my choir in Exeter, and it always moved the audience.

Sleep

The evening hangs beneath the moon,

A silver thread on darkened dune.

With closing eyes and resting head;

I know that sleep is coming soon.

Upon my pillow, safe in bed,

A thousand pictures fill my head.

I cannot sleep, my mind's aflight;

And yet my limbs seem made of lead.

If there are noises in the night,

A frighting shadow, flickering light

Then I surrender unto sleep,

Where clouds of dreams give second sight.

What dreams may come, both dark and deep,

Of flying wings and soaring leap?

As I surrender unto sleep.

Sleep.

22° halo

I was going to write about Martin Rees winning the Templeton Prize, but he was trumped in interested-ness by an observed optical phenomenon.

Just before midday there was a full 22° halo around the sun. There was a lot of high cloud, which is formed of ice crystals. So the halo forms as the sunlight is refracted in what are in effect hexagonal prisms. The angle of minimum deviation is almost 22°, a bit less for the red end of the spectrum, and a bit more for the blue. I took a photo of part of the halo. It isn't brilliant as I didn't want to point the camera at the sun and risk frying it. But you can just about see that the sky is darker inside the halo, and that the inner edge is reddish and the outer edge is bluish.

Hortus conclusus

The concept for this year's Serpentine Gallery, says the designer Peter Zumthor, "is the hortus conclusus, a contemplative room, a garden within a garden".

The term hortus conclusus literally means "enclosed garden", but is also used as a symbol and title of the Virgin Mary in Mediaeval and Renaissance art. As such, it is associated with the doctrines of the immaculate conception and the perpetual virginity of Mary. Personally, I think the incarnation has greater depth without these doctrinal appendages, but the symbolism has led to some beautiful art, such as this Annunciation by Veneziano.

Here is Mucknell's own hortus conclusus, photo again from the Dedication on the Annunciation. At present it boasts some daffs, a few junipers, some baby hellebores, and some wild foxglove. We'll be putting ferns in too. Anything that we hope will cope with shade and wind.

Photo credit: Rev Andrew Spurr.

The guest is God

The guest wing has opened, and we have our first official guests. Coincidentally, we have been reading from Chapter 53 in the Rule of Benedict on the Reception of Guests: "All guests who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ".

I've been enjoying catching up on Tobias Jones' columns in the Guardian, about his family's community for people in crisis in a 10-acre woodland in Somerset. It's based on the Pilsdon Community near Bridport in Dorset, which was based on Nicholas Ferrar's Little Gidding and on the radical monasticism of the early Christian church. In his column, he describes the triumphs and trials, the nitty gritty of setting up a community, the members and the guests, and how they are caring for and making a living from the woodland. In one article, he writes about hospitality and their open-door policy: "hospitality has always been a sacred act, a cultural obligation through which people inadvertently glimpse the holy. In India they use the phrase from the Taittiriya Upanishad, "Atithi Devo Bhavah", meaning "The guest is God"... In Hebrew scriptures, Abraham and Sarah received guests who turned out to be angels."

Although in some ways it's very different from Mucknell, in others it's very similar. Perhaps you could say they are complementary.

Flutterbies

The cowslips have flowered prolifically by the south east hedge, and there is a solitary flower south of 'Charlie's Hook'. On each wander, I see more wild flowers appearing:

• The common fumitory, a purple spike on the fence side of the bank around the garth. The plant is said to resemble smoke due to the whitish bloom on the leaves, hence fumus terrae, smoke of the earth.
• And the cuckoo flower or lady's smock, in palest mauve, in amongst the new trees on the stream edge of the planting. They are in the brassicaceae, the mustard or cabbage family, which is also known as the cruciferae, an older name meaning "cross-bearing", because the four petals of their flowers form a cross.

At the weekend I saw a couple of male orange-tip butterflies along the stream, and another white butterfly which might have been the female - they don't always come close and stay still for long enough! It might also have been a green-veined white, as both use cuckoo flower as a larval foodplant. But the orange-tip usually emerges in early April, and the white in late April, so I would go for the female orange-tip. There are a couple of peacocks and plentiful tortoiseshells. Peacock adults feed on the cuckoo flower too.

Difficult to swallow

We now have four tomato seedlings. As there were two yesterday and one the day before, I calculate that by the end of April there'll be 1,073,741,824.

I found a few patches of ground ivy near the stream. It has attractive small violet-coloured flowers, and apparently "has numerous medicinal uses, and is commonly used as a tasty salad green in many countries." There is also a lot of silverweed on the edge of the tree planting, which has edible roots. But I'm not sure the community is ready quite yet to eat ground ivy, silverweed, chickweed or nettle soup.

The light brown of a gliding kestrel brightened a dull rain-bespattered morning. The sun appeared in the afternoon, as did my first swallow of the year. "One swallow does not make a summer", said Aristotle, who wouldn't have confused March in England with summer in Greece, but who thought that swallows, storks and kites hibernated. Gilbert White also considered the possibility that swallows hibernated, but mine would have wintered in southern Africa.

Planting for the future

The lettuce, calabrese, cauliflower and cabbage seedlings are growing away merrily in their trays, and should be ready for pricking out next week. The tomatoes were of concern, but have made a small start and show two shoots - potential! Meanwhile, the potatoes are chitting in the garden shed.

Anthony and I planted a couple of birch trees, a rose 'Brother Cadfael'(!) and five yews around the front of the building and garth. You might say the yews are planting for the future. Yews are classified by age and girth: ancient yews are over 800 years old and 7m in girth; veteran yews are over 500 (and maybe upto 1,200) and 4.9m. There are 6 ancient and veteran yews in Worcester Diocese, the nearest a collapsed veteran in the churchyard at Powick.