A garden in Orkney

My last six on Saturday was a half dozen favourite garden blooms, this time it’s the turn of favourite garden birds. As with the blooms, choosing six favourite birds is nigh on impossible but here goes.

First up is the Starling, for me a beautiful and much overlooked bird. As a child, on the small East Yorkshire council estate that I grew up on, it seemed that the pantiled roof of every house had at least one Starlings nest under the eves. We called them Sheppies, a name which surely must originate from their habit of hitching rides on the backs of sheep. Starling itself comes from the Anglo Saxon, little star, some say it’s named for its star spangled plumage, others for its silhouette shape in flight.

Next up comes another bird that, like the Starling, sometimes gets bad press in a garden environment, the Woodpigeon. We don’t see many here, on Hoy Rock/feral doves, who roost on the cliffs and raid the garden daily, are much more numerous. These two are regular visitors, quite shy when compared to the Rock doves who arrive at dawn to hoover up all before them. Woodpigeon nests are flimsy, a thin and semi-transparent platform of twigs through which the typical clutch of two white eggs can often be seen. Years ago, on a farm where the barns were being rewired, I found a hedgerow nest made entirely of offcuts of electrical cable. Twigs of blue, brown and yellow-green, each with a bright copper core.

We get a lot of Finches here, regular readers will know that the plan was always to make this plot not just human but also wildlife friendly and as time has progressed bird numbers have increased. Of the ten species of Finch we have seen here, five are now regular breeders. Of those the Siskin is by far the most tolerant of humans, a tiny finch that arrives here in April, along with its equally diminutive Lesser Redpoll cousins. The photo below is an example of their tolerance, the bird was so close that I had to step back to allow the camera to focus.

Next comes the Wren, not quite the Uk’s smallest resident bird, that prize goes to the Goldcrest, but if there was a prize for the loudest song from the smallest body, the Wren would win it hands down. A bird that sings its heart out. Nest sites are always inventive and varied, among other places we’ve had them inside a ball of twine, in an old, rotting from the inside out, gatepost, and up on the moor I once found a nest at almost ground level, tucked low in a protective arch of heathers.

Next is a bird whose arrival here can almost be timed to the day, each year on around the 20th of April, we’ll hear the first Cuckoo call. In the North they’re the Gowk, from the norse, gaukr. Their call is said to be a bringer of good or bad fortune, depending on from which direction you first hear it. A call from West is the best, said to bring a promise of a prosperous year. At home we hear them first on the moor, which is due west – I live in hope. Another proverb, that hails from my childhood in Yorkshire, says that on hearing the first Cuckoo you should, for good luck, turn over the coins in your pocket.

And lastly, the villain of the piece, the Sparrow hawk. One of natures natural born killers. In reality they’re no villain, more a sign of a balanced eco system, a system healthy enough to support apex predators. They visit here pretty much daily and their arrival is announced by an explosion of wings, as birds of all sizes scatter or seek shelter from bright eyes and sharp talons. The Rock doves mentioned earlier, are a hawk early warning system. Always alert they’re the first to scatter, giving a vital few seconds warning to smaller less aware birds. The one below is a female, sitting out the rain and ever watchful. She’s a quarter larger and twice as heavy as the male, capable of tackling prey up to and including the size of a Wood pigeon. In past times her old english name was Spar. To a norseman she was Freya, after the goddess whose cloak of feathers allowed her to turn into a hawk. The noticeably smaller male is a musket, from mosca – a Fly.

For more Six on Saturdays, from gardens far and wide, head over to Cornwall and Jims blog https://gardenruminations.co.uk/2026/08/01/six-on-saturday-1-8-2026/#more-20878

One of my favourite places to walk lies at the Southern tip of Hoy. On OS maps it has the name of Rotten loch which I assumed, like most places here, would be a corruption of old norse. It seems not and as there’s no loch to be seen, perhaps it has silted up, I’m going to lay the rotten part on the fetid black water that in places oozes up from your boot steps. It’s a low and undulating landscape of coastal grassland and wide shallow Geo’s and it’s a real haven for wildlife. The ground is wet in winter, wettish in summer and like much of this island, with its thin soil and tractor unfriendly gradients, it can’t be mown or tilled. A few sheep and a herd of semi-feral cattle wander here and there, keeping the sward short and wildflower rich.

In places, at this time of year, the land wears a confetti of pink, if you had the time (or inclination) Heath-spotted orchids could be counted by the thousand. In really wet spots, where even in summer every footstep is a squelch, Orchids are replaced by Ragged robin, a close cousin of Red campion whose torn and tattered looking flowers give the impression that they have been shredded by the easterlies that regularly whip in from the sea.

Locally Heath-spotted orchids are “Eve’s”. Northern-marsh orchids, that also grow here in abundance, are “Adams”

It’s generally agreed that Orkney has seven species of butterfly, rising to nine or ten when you count summer migrants. This year, with an influx of Painted ladies, it’s ten, next year the ladies may be shy and we may drop back down to nine. Of the ones I see at Rotten loch, my favourite is the Common blue, a resident species. They’re the Kingfisher of the butterfly world, a brief flash of violet-blue wings and they’re gone, flitting from clover to clover. 

In winter the background noise comes from the rolling crash of surf. In summer there’s still the crash of water on stone – the land rolls down to shore of the rarely calm waters of the Pentland Firth, but at this time of year the seas rumbling and endless  battle with terra firma is overshadowed by the call of birds. It’s a breeding ground for many species, from Skylarks through to Black-backed gulls. As you walk the birds give a running commentary, warning fledgelings of a two legged interloper. Most vocal are carrot billed Oystercatchers and bright legged Redshanks, as you walk they follow you, their calls repeated on a high pitched loop. Either species would be a great tone for an alarm clock, impossible to sleep through.

Above your head Lesser-blacked gulls follow and circle, warning fledgelings with a nasal “Khow-khow”. The fledglings meanwhile just watch you pass by, wondering what all the fuss is about.

The shoreline is ragged, cut by the tides. A favourite spot to sit is a geo that lies close to the site of a long lost Broch. Wide and shallow it must once have been perfect for the men who built Brochs to launch their boats from, vessels that likely wore a skin of seal hide over a skeleton of willow. There are two large flat boulders, sea smoothed and backside friendly. I sat for a while and when the tide lapped my boots and pushed me away, I took a photograph with a deliberate long exposure, just enough to blur time and water.

As I set up the tripod, a bull Grey seal whose ancestors skins may once have become Iron Age boats, eyed proceedings from a reef of black rock, occasionally shifting his weight as the incoming tide threatened to lift him from his berth. In the shallows of the reef an Eider and her ducklings were diving for molluscs. The ducklings were in their element, buoyant as corks, briefly popping to the surface before quickly diving again. I got lucky with the duckling at the top of the page, a fleeting eye to eye contact before he or she upended and disappeared, joining mum and siblings for a hunt amongst the kelp. 

An oystercatcher dozed on a rock, probably exhausted after a serious pleep at the human session. As with the shot of the geo I wanted to use a long exposure, blurred sea around a sharp oystercatcher. The foldaway tripod that I usually carry is great for my little fuji camera that gets used for landscapes and the like, but with legs like Bambi it’s not so good for the camera and long lens combo that gets used for wildlife. Rather than put the best part of 4kg on a 1kg tripod I sat down, balanced elbow on knee and with the camera and lens in the crook of my arm, set a two second exposure. The sea blurred as expected but rock and oystercatcher aren’t quite sharp. Knee, elbow and crook clearly don’t make a very good tripod but I quite like the painterly effect. To be tried again with a heavier tripod, or maybe a lighter camera 🙂

I’m an avid reader of other peoples blogs, be they about photography, gardening or wildlife.  A recent find has been Six on Saturday, a blog written by Jim Stephens, who is based in East Cornwall, at the opposite end of the country from this neck of the woods. 

I know a lot of the old Plot 29 gang from Allan Jenkins much missed Grauniad column visit this blog and one thing that was often said in the comments on AJ’s column was “we wish we could post photo’s of our own plots”, that prompted me to write my own blog and the beauty of Jims blog is that you can, and are actively encouraged to, add a link to six photographs from your own plot, be they from facebook, twitter or indeed a blog of your own. These are my Six on Saturday, a half dozen favourite summer blooms, three of mine, three of Jacqui’s (aka the Head gardener 😉)

A favourite of Jacqui’s, Thalictrum black stockings, the Meadow rue, a leggy five foot tall plant that in late June tops its black stems with a candy floss of flowers. For this garden, with its regular summer gales, it needs a discreet stake or two. Great in sun or part shade

This one is a happy accident, we make our compost with liberal quantities of seaweed collected from the shore and the Mayweed seeds probably came home with a load of what’s locally called tang & ware. It’s said to be a perennial but for us it’s quite short lived and is best seen as an annual. The upside is that it self sows freely, the downside is that should you be inclined to use it, its latin name is virtually unpronounceable.

Geraniums do well here and are pretty much a mainstay of the garden. As the caption says this one is Summer snow. Of all the varieties we grow, it’s the easiest to overlook. It’s not a clump former, is leggy and, if I’m honest, a bit scrawny. It has tiny flowers, no bigger than the nail of your little finger, but it’s a favourite because, like the mayweed above, once planted it will self sow like a poppy. It appears wherever it chooses, often getting a leg up from taller plants, at the moment we have one growing through a purple leafed Elder.

This is really a joint favourite, the Schilling spurge, another one that in this garden needs to be staked. With its bright yellow flowers held on green leaved stems it’s one of those plants that can be put anywhere, this one is growing with Astrantia roma. It looks good whatever companion you give it and is also a great foil for dark leaved shrubs.

In our old south facing, sandy soil plot in East yorkshire, to grow meconopsis would have been an act of plant cruelty, here, with our cool and often wet but relatively free draining soil, they’re a plant that does really well. We’ve no idea of the name of this one, a lucky survivor, found by accident when we cleared the garden of chest high brambles.

Last but not least comes a Kniphofia “fiery fred”, a red hot poker. We’ve tried a few pokers here and fred by far has proved to be the best. We grow it in both sun and semi shade and for me it looks best when it’s backlit – at this time of year we have a late evening magic hour in the back garden, when everything is lit by the “about to disappear behind the Hoy hills” sun. A favourite time for taking photographs. Named after the Yorkshire cricketer, “Fiery Fred Truman”.

Jim’s blog. https://gardenruminations.co.uk

After June’s bumper crop of sunshine, July has brought a bit of a reset, grey and occasionally very wet, at one point last week it rained nonstop for 48 hours, a truly biblical downpour that saw low cloud cling to the land like thick grey smoke. Next week though it’s all change again, to quote the late, great Caroline Aherne, it will allegedly be “Scorchio”, a high pressure weather system is promising settled days and bright skies.

Although it should be said that scorchio in this neck of the woods is around 18 degrees C.

With rain forecast for pretty much every day through early July, we grabbed the opportunity to plant more trees. Hoy can lay claim to having the uk’s most northerly ancient woodland, it lies close to Rackwick at the north end of the island and is a remnant of the scrubby woodlands that would once have covered much of Orkney. A mix, among others, of  Rowan, Downy birch, Aspen, and Willow. I’d managed to lay my hands on trees grown from Berriedale’s native stock, and it was these that we planted. They’re available in very limited quantities and for the edge of the meadow between house and sea, I had a grand total of six Aspens and a dozen Downy birch. The aspens especially are hard to get, they rarely set seed in Orkney and spread by suckering from the parent plant, the downy birch are easier but there’s rightly a limit to how much seed is collected each year. The very salt tolerant aspens went the closest to the sea, near a pond that we dug a few years ago. The birch went halfway between house and shore, in a spot dotted yellow with the flowers of Cats-ear and Tormentil.

I also had a good number of Rowans, a mix of both Berriedale stock and trees grown from seed collected in a remote valley, a wild and beautiful spot that is overlooked by Ward Hill, the highest point in Orkney. Planting the aspens and birch was easy, not so the rowans, they were destined for the patch of moor that rises away behind the garden. There’s no path, nor would I want to make one, so you load up the barrow, push it as far as you can get and then load up a plastic shellfish basket salvaged from the shore and walk, or rather stumble, your way up the slope, dropping to your knees every now and then when your foot catches a hidden snick, a narrow channel, formed by rainwater rushing from moor to sea. 

The ground is terrible, in places stone with a hint of soil, so before planting goes ahead you walk the area with a length of sharpened rebar in hand, if it can be pushed in more than a foot, mark the spot with a cane and carry on. In the end I planted sixty-six rowans, keeping track of where I had been by topping each cane with a now empty plant pot. The pots were collected but the canes will stay, with the rowans barely peeping above the wind cropped heathers, the canes, for a year or two at least, will be a helpful guide to where I have actually planted them.

After planting the rowans I went for a walk to the old peat cuts, go over the boundary fence and after a few hundred yards you’re amongst  them. They’re silent now, reclaimed by nature, if it wasn’t for the wide sunken areas, some many multiple tennis courts in size – the ‘cuts’ left behind when the peat was taken for fuel, you would have no idea that generations of men and women had spent countless Summers there, cutting earth for their hearths.

A bird that is ubiquitous up on the moors is the bonxie, the Great skua. The size of a herring gull on steroids they’re a bird seemingly made for aggression, not quite gull, not quite bird of prey. They  take on all comers, up to and including fully grown Greylag geese. As I walked through the cuts a pair watched from a favourite vantage point, a spot that like the peat cutters, may go back many generations, a small bump of green where the heathers grow brighter, enriched by a build up of the birds guano.

It was inevitable that the birds would take umbrage at my presence and sure enough they couldn’t help themselves, one coming in at knee height, the other preferring an in your face bluff, veering away at the last second, passing your shoulder with a whoosh of wings. This went on for a few hundred yards, they had no nests or young to defend, just bonxies being bonxies.

Back in the garden, another upside of the rain is that Hosta’s are suddenly playing centre stage. They’re a plant that does well here, this year is seemingly a slug and snail year but despite that, for whatever reason, we have seen very little gastropod damage, a nibble here and there and that’s about it. The two hosta’s  in the picture are Halcyon and Sum & substance, little and large.

In the fight against slugs and snails we do have allies, frogs and toads and the occasional visiting hedgehog. The favourite allies of all though are Song thrushes, they arrive each Spring, building hidden nests delicately lined with mud and hatching youngsters from pale blue eggs that are the colour of a summer morning sky. For weeks the parents have been backwards and forwards, snails in beaks, now we’re seeing the youngsters, three yesterday, learning the ropes from their worn out parents.

Photographed on North bay, on a bright and flat calm morning, this Eider and three of her five ducklings, were part of a larger crèche, a trio of mothers with a bakers dozen of youngsters in tow.

The crèches are formed to give protection against airborne predators, wandering bonxies and black-backed gulls. For adults and ducklings alike, there’s safety in numbers.

The local name for an Eider is a Dunter, from the old norse – to dunt, to bob up and down.

For gardeners, June in Orkney, has been pretty much perfect. We’ve had a steady warmth with both dry and wet days and thankfully, no curve ball gales. The past week was an amalgamation of the month, a mix of rain & sun and on Friday, just for good measure, a haar that shrunk the visible world to a few dozens of yards.

The solstice was a little grey but bright. I had planned to get up early and photograph the Sun as it rose in the North-east, a last minute bedtime check of Sundays cloud cover forecast, brought a lay in instead.

On the day of the solstice, we had a visit from a mainland gardening club. Thirty or so folk, many of whom had visited a couple of years back, when the garden in some places was still very much a work in progress. The pressure was on to show that we had actually made good on plans since their last visit. They reminded us, more than once, of what was new, sometimes you get so used to seeing the garden that you forget the changes that you’ve made. Jacqui held a plant sale that went down a storm, dozens of old favourites left for pastures new – we hope they thrive.

A job we never got around to was chipping where we park, as well as a parking spot it’s also a bit of a dumping ground, leftovers from house renovations together with “one day that will be useful” finds from the shore. The plan had been to tidy and chip it last month, then my van/shed on wheels died.  It had been terminal for a while, 19 years old with moon and back mileage and more warning lights on the dash than Apollo 13. The final straw was a failed ignition, sooner or later sea air kills vehicle electrics. Transport costs are high here so we killed two birds with one stone, a loadall arrived, picked up the van and took it along the road. With the van out of the way next to arrive was a bulk load of chips from a *mainland quarry,  to be dumped on the now clear drive, after which the van was loaded onto the tipper for its last journey to a mainland scrapyard. As the tipper drove into the distance I fought the urge to shed a tear and wave a hankie 🙂

*Mainland is the largest island in Orkney, home to Kirkwall and Stromness. In Orkney, the UK mainland is simply “South” or “Sooth”

In the wider landscape, on a walk to Cantick head (pictured top of the page), that lies at the south-eastern tip of the linked island of South walls, seabirds were watched on the low cliffs that sit at the highest point of the headland. On Hoy, we live in a landscape dominated by heather moor, at Cantick, and indeed on South walls itself, it’s more pastoral, a greener island – old wet meadows and coastal heath. Like Hoy it’s mostly untouched by the plough or the mower. Only on the islands west facing side, the side that we see from home, where gently sloping ground is warmed by summers long days, is there a mixed landscape of both pasture and arable.

Despite the mere seven miles distance, I watched birds at Cantick that at home are a rare sight. Kittiwakes and European shags were nesting on the vertical faces of the cliffs, despite living a couple of stone throws from a bay, I’ve yet to see the former at home, the latter is seen now and then, always at a distance.

Where there are eggs and chicks you’ll also have egg and chick thieves. Great black-backed gulls were constantly on patrol, thickset birds, riding the thermals on broad wings. On a permanent lookout for an easy meal.

A partner in crime Raven, whose tatty feathers showed that he or she was ready for an autumn moult, sneaked away below the cliffs. A guillemots egg held firmly in its beak.

I walked home along the opposite shore of the headland, in contrast to the cliffs it’s an area of low lying shingle that skirts the bay of Osmundwall, shallow and sheltered – it was once a home to Viking fleets. Dunlin were feeding amongst the bladderwrack, they’re a small Starling sized bird that also has the name of the “plovers page”, given for their habit of mixing in with wintering flocks of Golden plover.

There were no Golden plovers that day but Ringed plovers were in abundance, they nest on the shingle and, as I walked along a track that services the lighthouse, they constantly pleeped warnings to hidden chicks.

As the plovers pleeped from the shore, another species scolded me from the air, the Arctic tern. A bird that every year migrates from european and arctic breeding grounds to the antarctic, a round trip, depending on the start point, of between 45000 and 59000 miles, all from a bird that weighs in at around 110 grams. Unlike the plovers they weren’t ticking me off for being close to their nests, their colony was a good half mile away. It’s close to the house of friends, who every summer have to run a gauntlet to collect their post from the end of the track that leads to their home. Dive bombing terns, with their sharp red beaks, have more than once drawn blood from unprotected scalps and foreheads. In my case they were just terns being terns, nests or no nests they seem to be wired to be permanently waspy, breaking off from their route home just to squawk at me for the sake of it.

Their latin name is Sterna paradisaea, the Swallow of Paradise. The first part of the name comes from their flight pattern, quick and Swallow like, the second from their long tail streamers, thought by the 18th century Danish zoologist who named them, to be similar to the plumage of a Bird of Paradise.

The past couple of weeks have brought a mix of days, some gave bursts of heavy stair-rod rain and others gifted bright and cloudless skies. Today it’s grey and flat calm, barely a ripple on the bay.

The one common denominator has been warmth, add in the spells of rain plus our current nineteen hours of daylight and the result is perfect growing weather. Jacqui is on a “painting the Forth Bridge” task, working her way through the garden, secateurs and string in hand for cutting back and tying in wayward perennials, at her feet a trug that in no time at all fills with weed seedlings. It seems in Orkney at least, this is a weed, and a snail, year. The snails get off lightly, collected up and thrown into the meadow, ditto the finger length black slugs that seem to lurk under every plant pot.

In the past I’ve mentioned the guerrilla garden, a vaguely deeded no-mans land strip of roadside verge that is part ours, part county councils. A home for spare plants and cuttings that has almost become an extension of the garden. A  long narrow border that runs the length of the front garden stone dykes. It has had a narrow escape, the island is getting fibre broadband, a replacement for the aged copper wire that an engineer once cheerfully told me was about as useful as ‘wet string’. Fortunately the diggers laying the pipes for the cable went along the other side of the road, had they not, there would have been frantic days of lifting and subsequent replanting.

An on and off project for the past few weeks has been the digging of a new pond. When we started a garden here it was as much for wildlife as it was for humans, and the one thing that was always missed, was a pond. Three were dug in the meadow and they’ve proved to be a magnet for wildlife but the meadow was easy, ask kevin, the owner driver of an excavator working along the way, to trundle his machine across and a few hours later you have ponds. In the garden it’s more awkward, there’s shallow soil atop sandstone and a sloping site to contend with, both of which always put us off. In the end we girded our loins, gave up a front garden bed and dug two ponds, the soil as expected was shallow, in places barely a foot down before you hit solid stone. To cope with the slope the lowest side of the bigger pond was raised up with dug out spoil. Both were too shallow to backfill with soil, so each has been lined with sea-smoothed flat stones from the shore. A system is in place to fill them with rainwater from the house roof. 

A pump has been added and a blade waterfall was priced up, two to three hundred pounds depending if copper or corten steel – Ow Much!! I bought one made of thick ABS plastic – twenty quid, and covered the visible bits with a piece copper picked up from a farm dump. Apart from the copper, which is nicely aged 🙂, it’s all a bit new at the moment but time and planting will take off the shininess. A few evenings ago a Frog was spotted sitting on a cobble, entering the water with a plop when I got too close, that single moment made it worth the effort.

In the meadow it feels like mother nature is holding her breath, so many plants are on the cusp of flowering, we’re still waiting for the day, when suddenly one morning, you look across and there’s a sea of flower heads, nodding to the beat of the wind. There are a few early starters, damp loving ragged robin and water avens are open, in drier spots the first ox-eyes are unfurling, turning bright yellow faces to the sun.

Wickedly spiked marsh thistles (pictured top) are also bursting open, capping their urn-like flower buds with starbursts of vivid pink. They’re a mixed blessing, great for bees and pollinators but very invasive. The only upside of their invasiveness is that for the first year they form a floret, flowering only in the second year. It’s an easy enough task, to slow their plans of field, if not world domination, to wander round now and then with an aptly named thistle spear, cutting the florets root at its base.

Below the meadow harbour seals are giving birth, we tend to leave them be, avoiding disturbing both pups and mothers for a few weeks, but can’t resist a quiet peek now and then. Hot days at low tide are best, when all, young and old, snooze the day away on a thin mattress of bladderwrack.

The last days of May brought fine and settled weather. Days of blue skies and light winds. We spent long spells in the garden, Jacqui catching up with weeding and boxing up plants for customers on mainland while I got on with a new project, replacing a front garden bed with a cobble lined pond. We never get the heat that other parts of the UK sometimes have to endure but even with an ever present breeze off the sea, it was T-shirt weather, warm enough to cast a clout*.

In the garden it seems that new flowers are appearing almost hourly. At this time of year it’s truly hard to keep up. A plant that does really well here is valeriana pyrenaica, the Capons tail grass or Pyrenean valerian, one of those fuss free plants that is happy in sun or shade, either damp or dry. All it needs, because of its height and spread, is a couple of discreet stakes. 

In a shady spot, beneath two sycamores, a valeriana grows alongside spires of blue Cammasia, a member of the asparagus family. Cammasia’s hail from North America and in the wild they’re a native of damp meadows. They need a moist but free draining soil and although they aren’t quite as forgiving of location as the valeriana, they’re still a perfect fit for this neck of the woods. Their flowers are short lived, lasting a week or two at the most and are always worth the wait.

For me, at this time of year blue is a favourite colour, along with the cammasia’s the blues in the garden come mostly from catmints and siberian iris, the latter is yet another damp lover, but there’s also an easily overlooked blue, the forget-me-not like flowers of Brunnera silver heart, a plant that is really grown for its foliage and whose tiny flowers are perhaps a little bit under appreciated.

Another blue, that has taken a few years to get established, is veronica gentianoides, the Gentian speedwell. A lover of damp free draining soil, it really should have raced away here but is only now starting thicken and spread. Its spires of pale flowers are the colour of bleached denim, they bow to the rain and are unforgiving of the wind, perhaps Orkney is too harsh for it but now it’s established, it’s definitely a keeper.

As would be hoped for at this time of year, the garden is abuzz with bees. Of the species we have in Orkney, one of the most seen is the aptly named Common carder, a ginger yellow fur-ball of a  bumblebee that nests on the ground amongst thick vegetation. In the wild clovers and vetches are a favourite food source, in the garden, for this week at least, their top of the menu choice is Geranium phaeum.

As some plants are flowering other are already starting to fade. The flowers of honesty, at their best a few weeks ago, are already turning to seed. Like their flowers, the seed pods are best when backlit by a low sun, translucent and gold with each seed a tadpole silhouette. By autumn the pods will be silver-white and paper dry, the silver dollars that give the plant its common name.

Beyond the garden, out on the bay, small groups of Eider drakes are being seen, a sure sign that females are incubating hidden clutches of eggs. Their job over for the year, the boys leave the girls to it and pass the time motoring around on the water, a month or two ago they’d be driving each other away, fired up with the desire to find a mate, now they’re all bonhomie, past disputes forgotten, at least until next spring.

In June, on the shore of the bay, harbour seals will start to pup. Unlike their larger grey seal cousins their pups can swim at a day old, an advantage for colonies that pup on sandbanks, where twice a day the nursery is covered with water. At home they pup at the base of the low cliff that falls away from the meadow. At high tide, when the water laps at the base of the short, but vertical cliff, adults and pups alike will often stay put, bending like bananas, keeping heads and flippers out of the shallow water. They do this to regulate their body temperature – thermoregulation. Until I googled it one day I’d always assumed that they had just got comfy, and being quite laid back animals, really couldn’t be bothered to move, high tide or not.

*  “Ne’er cast a clout ’till May be out”, slang from my home county of Yorkshire, “Don’t put away your coat before the month of May is over” 🙂

The past few weeks have brought a settling down of the weather. The days are much longer now, the first glow of light arriving in the North-east at well before 5am and at the days end, the last light of the evening lingers in the west beyond 10pm. The first day of (astronomical) summer is more than a month away but for us it feels like summer is already here. With the odd curveball gale excepted there’ll be  weeks of long days now, stretching into autumn – sun and rain, flowers and birdsong, well worth winters six long months of wait.

In the garden there has been an explosion of growth, a rapid change, in a few short weeks we’ve gone from spring bulbs and bare earth to lush clumps of greenery, all full of promise for the summer and autumn to come.

Sycamores are bursting into leaf. This morning brought a gentle rain, I stood for a while beneath the sycamore in the photograph at the top of the page, listening to the hum of bumblebees going about their business in the branches above me. Harvesting nectar from the easily overlooked flowers and, like the human below them, benefiting from the shelter of a newly unfurled pale green umbrella.

A few years ago, in a border that sits in the the shade of the sycamore (and its same age twin), Jacqui planted a handful of erythronium bulbs. They thrived in our cool, moist and slightly acidic soil and are now dotted here and there beneath the two trees. They get their common name of dogtooth lily from the shape of the bulbs but my favourite, from much colder climes than this, is the glacier lily, one of the first species to flower after snow melt.

Where flowers have yet to appear, foliage makes up for a lack of zing. The two below are hosta halcyon and hemoracallis stafford. Halcyon, to be fair, doesn’t need flowers, a plant grown for its broad spears of veined blue-green leaves whose flowers are almost an afterthought. Stafford is the opposite, the day lily, grown for its hot, late summer, furnace-red blooms. At this time of year you tend to pass it by, eyes on other things, until a shower of rain gives its foliage sparkle and life.

As with the dogtooth lilies, alliums were also introduced a few years ago, lovers of sun rather than the lilies shade. For here they were risky, preferring free draining soil and said to be haters of winter wet. Fingers were crossed and as is often the case, they thrived. They’ll open in a week or two, purple star-burst heads that draw bees like a magnet draws iron, but there’s also beauty in their ripe buds, all soft purples and lime greens, held upright on long, silver-green stems.

Another fairly recent introduction to the garden is honesty, lunaria annua. Jacqui has a live and let live attitude to self sown plants and now, after a slow start, they pop up anywhere and everywhere, from full sun front gardens to shelter-belt shade. Lunaria comes from lunar, a nod to the moonlike silver seed-heads that will follow the flowers and for here, will last until Autumns winds scatter them far and wide. Annua suggest that they’re an annual, but it depends, in this garden, perhaps because of our short summers, they’re a biennial. They look best in the late evening, backlit by a dipping sun.

Outwith the garden, a job that finally got done was the mowing of the meadow. I usually mow and clear it in late autumn but had the (not so) bright idea of leaving it until spring so that finches, red-listed Twite in particular, could feed on the seed heads. Good idea for the birds, not so good for the human who cut it. Wet and gale flattened it took twice as long and yielded three times as much “hay” as an autumn cut. Raked into winrows and left to dry, it then had to be quickly and laboriously cleared before new growth started to anchor the winrows to the earth. Plan B is to return to an autumn cut and plant a couple of separate areas for finches. It cheered up the pair of Greylags that nest nearby though, fresh short grass for them to graze. A tiny silver lining 🙂

Unlike the garden proper, it will be a few weeks yet before the meadow comes into its own. Each year it goes from strength to strength and it’s genuinely heartwarming to see a carpet of new seedlings, each vying for space with grasses and established perennials, in what a few short years ago was pretty much a soulless and lifeless monoculture. Mid may though is early days for grassland in Orkney, I had a “dodge the rain” walk through it with a camera this afternoon, of all the species present only Water avens, geum rivale, looked to be on the cusp of flowering – a single half open bud with a shy peep of an apricot pink flower.

In Orkney, March ended pretty much as it began, breezy and wet. The early weeks of the month also brought what were probably the last frosts of the winter, just hard enough to sugar-coat the newly emerging leaves of London pride, a plant whose latin name saxifraga urbium, literally translates to stone breaker of the city – one of the first plants to colonise London bomb sites in WW2.

We had rain and gales aplenty but also some rare bright and beautiful days, blue skies and flat calm. Days that make you forget the wet and the wild and forgive Orkney of the worst that she throws at you. A sure sign of better days to come was the first haar of the year, they form when warming air passes over a cooler sea. A soft low blanket of grey-white that stole the sunrise and hid neighbouring islands from view.

In the garden the cupboard is still pretty much bare, snowdrops have faded, tete-a-tete daffodils have taken their place, swapping white bells for citrus yellow trumpets. It will be some weeks yet before the gardens dark earth is lost beneath foliage and flowers. Gardening in Orkney is a slow burn start.

In the back garden, the first of our Ribes are in flower. We grow white and pink varieties and of the two, the pink is by far the hardiest, tough enough to grow not just at the edge of the garden but beyond the shelter-belt, on the edge of the moor. The pink was already here, a single overgrown shrub whose offspring, via cuttings, are now dotted wherever there’s a space. A magnet, and a life saver, for early flying bees.

Beyond the garden, close to the shore, a willow coppice, planted three years ago on a patch of ground that never dries out, has come into its own. Each cutting has reached at least head height, many are ten feet or more, all are adorned with hundreds of catkins, plump and white, as soft as lambs wool. From a distance, especially when backlit by the morning light, they glow like cherry blossom, white against dark, just the look we had hoped for. As March turns to April the catkins, as per the photo at the top of this page, will flower, bursting open, morphing from white to lime green. Next will come silver-grey leaves that in Autumn will fade to a soft orange-yellow. One of those trees that never stops giving.

As the willows have grown and thickened, birds have been drawn to them, long-beaked woodcock lurk beneath them, hiding amongst leaf litter and sedge, coming out at night to probe turf in the meadow, leaving behind the tell-tale daylight sign of ground dotted with hundreds of holes. This year a pair of Dunnocks have made the coppice their home. They’re hard to spot as they flit from low branch to low branch but the male, as I witnessed one morning last week, will occasionally rise to a loftier perch and sing a claim to his territory.

When we’re gifted flat calm days, one of my favourite things is to walk to the top of the low cliff beyond the willows, to a vantage point where flat ground falls quickly away to a beach of sea worn stone. A hidden spot, thick with ankle-snagging bramble and wild rose. The best time is just after sunrise, as the birds begin to stir for the day and the bay, untroubled by a breeze, is as still as a pool of mercury. Patrolling Fulmars, who nest on the low cliff, fly water-skimming figures of eight, occasionally cutting the bays surface with the lightest touch of a wing tip.

In March I managed a half dozen mornings, a clear and flat calm hour or two where, as the sun climbed higher, the warmth on your face rose as if controlled by a dial. There’s no real aim but to just watch and listen, to see the day come to life. Shore birds come and go, bright-billed oystercatchers and diminutive redshanks dash past, following the tides edge at zero feet. Curlews rise from a shore of sandstone and bladderwrack, complaining loudly of your presence.

Out on the bay, there’s a trio of Long-tailed ducks, a male and a female followed by another male – tail end Charlie. He’s tagging along, hoping she may elope with him. Soon, elopement or not, all three will leave to spend the summer in the high Arctic.

As the day wakes the ducks and the waders come and go, but the one abiding thing is a bob of Harbour seals. There are around twenty in total, a number that give or take one or two, has been pretty much constant in the seven years that we have lived on this side of the bay. Perhaps it’s the number that this small body of water can comfortably sustain. Most days they’re either  hauled out on the rocks, taking a siesta, or out swimming in the shallows but occasionally, when the tide is neither ebbing nor flowing, you’ll catch one bottling, sleeping upright in the water, just chilling, at peace with the world.