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- Stony silence where once there was the chatter of a friend
Sat, May 26, 2012 ANOTHER LIFE: IN THE GENTLE SPRING soundtrack that ushers me along the boreen these mornings (the better mornings, that is), one sound has been missing from the general blend of birdsong, sea breeze and disassembling surf from the shore. Norman MacCaig had a nice phrase for it – “a flint-on-flint ticking” – but the stonechat’s own name says it well enough. - The tracing of the shrew: why Celtic DNA leads back to Africa
Sat, May 19, 2012 ANOTHER LIFE: THERE COMES A DAY in May – not, surely, always the same one – when a calm blue sea beneath a sunny sky conjures a lone white triangle of sail, slowly tracking north. This year it coincided with a chorusing cuckoo, for extra promise that summer was at least beginning to inch in. - Beauty abounds as this rolling tome gathers much moss
Sat, May 12, 2012 ANOTHER LIFE: THE MOUNTAIN IN OUR window is bathed in warm and rosy light when the sun sets in the sea. A darker side faces inland. The great corrie scooped out above Doolough Pass is shadowed through the year. At the northern cliffs and buttresses, winter’s snow beds linger and the streams and waterfalls run cold. - Pissy beds, lion's tooth . . . It has to be the dandelion
Sat, May 5, 2012 ANOTHER LIFE: THE YELLOW OF DANDELIONS is like no other, that glow of orange at the heart of the flower surely borrowed from the sun. The verges of our western roads have been swathed in dandelion gold this spring, and soon the traffic will whisk another ghostly blizzard of seed to the farthest ribbons of tarmac. - How long is a bee's tongue, and why do ants protect plants?
Sat, Apr 28, 2012 ANOTHER LIFE THE TALLEST PLANTS in the tunnel just now are the thicket of broad beans (var Aquadulce) sown last autumn. Fired up by pelleted chicken manure and an early blast of sun, their whorls of bold black, white and pink flowers are swaying shoulder high, while the first pods are swelling from their shrivelled predecessors lower down the stems. I’ve never had such a promising crop – nor learned so much about one plant and its wildlife. - Stone the crows: the nuns who called in a hit squad
Sat, Apr 21, 2012 ANOTHER LIFE: THE MELLIFLUOUS TWITTERING of songbirds that attends my seed-sowing sessions in the polytunnel was rudely drowned out the other morning by a clamour of harshly disputatious noises from one of the trees that give the tunnel its shelter.
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