Groundhog day

Yesterday was Groundhog Day, or Imbolc, or perhaps more commonly in this country, Candlemas – exactly half way between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox, and traditionally a day for predicting the weather.

On Candlemas Day, if the thorns hang adrop, Then you can be sure of a good pea crop

Well, everything was certainly hanging adrop, but I don’t know about a good pea crop – every day I go down to the allotment it seems to be Groundhog Day; I dig up half a wheelbarrowload of weed roots, and the next time I go down, it’s exactly the same again. It’s all a bit dispiriting. But I suppose on the bright side, we’re halfway to Spring.

And it’s all so very muddy. The long frost has broken down the soil structure and made go a bit spongy, so it feels like there's gallons of water down there.

Still, the groundhog or the badger, or whatever it might be wouldn’t have stood a chance of seeing his shadow yesterday, so if the folklore is right, Spring is on its way and we can all start growing peas. Except we can’t, as John reminds me – it’s a waning moon.

* * *

I went up to Westonbirt in the afternoon with the Malmesbury Dog Walkers (you’d have thought I’d had enough mud for one day, but no...) Sally was there, and she has an allotment in Little Somerford, so I picked her brains about what to do about the endless quantities of subterranean marestail and bindweed root that seem to rear up overnight like some gardening version of the many-headed Hydra.

“The first thing to do is only dig over the bit you're actually going to grow things in - don’t bother with the rest, you’ll just find yourself fighting a losing battle,” she suggests quite sensibly. “You’ll never get rid of all the marestail – it's been around since the dinosaurs and survived the last ice age, so it's not going to worry too much about the odd bit being yanked out here and there.”

Already things are beginning to look up and I’m beginning to see some distant mirage of normal life forming hazily on the horizon, in between lengthy episodes of digging interspersed with muddy dog walks. I’ve lately begun to feel I’m in danger of developing an unhealthy relationship with my spade and I realise that I can't actually name many people in the village that haven't either got a dog or an allotment. Except for Adam and Cheryl, who I’m always popping round to borrow things from or ask to borrow the spare keys because I’ve forgotten to take mine down to the allotment with me.

“And if you can manage to get down there for about an hour every other day, you should soon find yourself keeping on top of it”

“Blimey!” says Fiona, who hasn't got an allotment. “It’s like being out on a walk with a couple of seventy-year old blokes!”

Not that I have have anything against seventy year-old blokes. In fact I can count several among my best friends.

Mind you, I suppose I have met most of them down on the allotments.

* * *

...and for badger lovers, here's a little clip taken by our neighbours in the snow. (See, Adam – I’m not the only one who comes round on the scrounge...)

Inspired by travel

There's something rotten at the heart of Little Somerford... At least, there was last night. The ladies of the Embroiderers’ Guild had to reconvene in Joan Wigmore’s sitting room for the monthly embroidery talk, as the Village Hall was mysteriously plagued by a terrible smell. Ian and Gordon were dispatched to investigate - closer inspection revealed the source; the decaying corpse of a badger under the floorboards. As neither Defra nor the rat man from the Council seemed to be particularly interested, Ian and Gordon came to the rescue with some woodworking tools and their spades, while Joan somehow managed to find enough seating for – well, rather a lot of ladies.

The Speaker, Christine Harley, took the assembled gathering on a fascinating tour as far afield as possible from the offending badger – South East Asia, as it turned out. Samples were passed round – such fabulous colours, such tiny stitches – a whistlestop armchair tour taking in exquisite baby carriers, shoes and jacket panels – a delicate, multicoloured embroidered magic-carpet excursion to Southern China, Thailand, Cambodia and Laos, accompanied by plenty of colourful travellers’ tales (one of which involved a pig. I won’t lower the tone by relating now – suffice to say, it involved a lavatory and was in much the same category as the badger. Only the pig wasn't dead - I'm sensing a feeling of too much information already...).

It’s a beautiful evening cycle ride back to Great Somerford, with the dipping sun turning the sky pink over hedrows dripping with cow parsley and elderflowers and flower-filled meadows which looked just perfect for an evening picnic. Exotic, colourful and fascinating though this evening's tales were, there’s no place like home. I think I can feel a spot of elderflower cordial-making coming on...

ASBO animals

Men at work? No, it’s tunnelling badgers who are responsible for this unsightly heap of sand in a field just off West Street. Futher inspection shows a deep hole that’s just the right size for tripping up an unsuspecting rambler, swallowing a curious terrier or dispatching a horse to the vet’s with a broken leg. And there’s more – 27 molehills in a nearby garden at the last count.
Just this week I’ve witnessed jaywalking deer – two chunky bucks cantered out in front of me as I hurtled along the Swindon Road – well, not exactly hurtled – my car is almost 20 years old, and as Richard at Somerford Motors will tell you, its hurtling days are long past. Thank goodness. If I’d have been going a few miles an hour faster, or the deer had chosen a second or two earlier to dash out, it would have been a different story.

“I hope you’d have had the presence of mind to sling it in the back of the car and take it off to Michael Thomas for butchering,” suggested my husband, with typical concern for my health and safety. But I digress…

In the last few days we’ve had burrowing badgers, menancing moles, jaywalking deer, kamikaze pheasants – and even the odd baby rabbit dashing out from the hedgerows in a dangerous game of chicken.

I’m all for encouraging wildlife, but it has to be the right sort of wildlife…