The Crown No One Wants

Magical thinking. None of us is immune. We are all the more susceptible when technology falls short. I had thought that La Corona might miss us. So many other things do. The hedgerow in photo above is rosa rugosa to feed the birds and scent the air and hold the wind at bay--or at least slow it. It is also a boundary of garden versus the comparatively wild moss or moor on the horizon in the photo. A flowering currant, a relic of someone else's garden, blooms incongruously, tenaciously among the peat and the reeds and the gorse. I dont think anyone digs their peats from there any more, and the old road which once passed along somewhere near there has gone without a trace. I mention that as if to justify my magical thinking.

But La Corona is here. Three cases in the hospital. Given the thousands elsewhere that hardly seems worth a mention except that there are so few of us. I don't know who they are. Without much difficulty I could ferret that information out because we are connected up here--not physically but socially. I will know someone who will know someone who will know who to ask. I don't want to know. I grieve for them and their family and friends whoever they are. And I have friends and family in the NHS gowning up to do battle against this new beast.

The promiscuity of La Corona means any of us is vulnerable. So those three in the hospital are just like us everywhere. Like John Donne's poem the bell tolls for us all.

The grey skies and 'little rain' of the morning are what my husband calls a good growing day. Spring is coming. The frittillaries that were just edging into
bloom are now chatting among themselves in a quiet corner as if nothing were awry.

And so we garden and we wait.

La Corona is as old as Life

and as new as today

her protean self is jealous

of the living things

and takes their breath away

We know her only

by her deadly passing

through the mead hall

no one sleeps easily now

where is Beowulf ?

Ti ann am muga and a single leaf of spinach

It is the hungry time of year. A sparrowhawk and another hawk were seen in the garden. I think they were looking for worms--I've been told despite their hunting prowess that the diet at least for the hawks that sit looking fierce on the fence posts along the road are actually worms. And the garden birds have been devouring the seeds on and around the bird table.

the wooden table-tree sitting proud

above stunted, whip-like trees

their leaves fodder only for the wind

Oh look a chaffinch

visitors single out favourites from the flutter of wings

you have a blue tit a robin or

I used to know the name

and always

there’s a blackbird

For her their names are their own

it was enough to know they were hungry

scoop by scoop she fed the tree, the birds, herself

knowing there would always be more hungry birds.

Like the poet persona, I've filled the bird table once already today. And watered the seedlings and tidied the kitchen and made the lunch and now it all needs doing again, but I take a CD-length break.

Today it's Yo Yo Ma on his cello with the soul of the tango. The richness of the music helps to feed my own hunger. As does the tea and the knoweldge that after 90 some days of DuoLingo I can say tea in a mug in Gaelic.

Anxiety is a kind of hunger gnawing away at us all just now. I try to keep myself busy. The tea and the music and enforced leisure are meant to be an antidote. Years ago my brother bought a static electricity generator. It was a relic from a time when electricty was thought to be helpful for all kinds of maladies. He experiemnted on me (of course..what are sisters for?). I dutifully held a handle from each side of the machine in my chubby hands while he cranked. The feeling of the low level of electricity coursing through me is how I often feel these days, except I can't drop the handles or make the generating stop.

Despite the music, I begin thinking of all the things that need doing--fill the table again put laundry on the line what will I make for tea will it stay dry enough for a walk what did I want to remember to add to Wednesday's grocery list? Is it safer to get cash from village post office or the ATM?

And I am rescued by one of my cats. She curls up on my lap and obliges me to be still for her sake. In that stillness,  the music makes its way in and smooths the electric hum of my fretsome self.

In the calm I think of the spinach in the cold frame. Almost big enough to take a leaf from each of the baby plants. And I have pots of younger ones waiting in the wings. We cannot do or make everything for ourselves, but we can take up arms against the hunger. One leaf at a time.

Snow Day in April

Of course it snows in April. My chldhood April came in like a lion and out like a lamb to describe the last difficult birthing of spring; here snow comes to make the frantic season of lambing just that more difficult.

I'm not lambing, so I revert to childhood memories of snow days. The shoop shoop of my snow trousers with their smooth water-resistant surface is like the leggings we wore under our dresses on schooldays or the smooth denim of the flannel-lined jeans of Saturdays and snow days.

Snow was either packing--suitable for snowballs, snowmen, snowangels or sledding; or not. I didn't need the fine differentiations ascribed to Inuit peoples.

The tell tale squeak beneath my boots tells me this is packing snow. I smile even though I probably wont make a snowman.  But I could, and that knowledge cheers me as I watch the snow curling neatly into little pom poms as it comes off the front of my boots.

I like the democratising of snow. It falls equally on things. I like the shortening of the horizon that comes with a full snow sky such as today, not the desultory flakes or the hard almost-hail that flies in like wasps.

These snowflakes are steady, large, feather-like, and the sky is full of them. As I try to make out the horizon, I understand the old tales of farmers out in the snow and lost. Even on this road that I know so well, it would be easy to miss the landmarks.

And snow that keeps on coming reminds me of the stories of ewes and their lambs hunkered up against a dyke and found safely days later because they had created a little pocket of air.

But today the snow is benign. The breeze is still. The sun is climbing higher and peering through the milky sky.  Already the snow is softening. The shoop shoop has changed tone as the snow has melted on the insides of my trousers.