March the 16th.

For Orkney, March has so far arrived with mostly settled days. A mixed bag of bright sunshine along with grey days that often brought rain. A day or two of gales were thrown in for good measure, but so far, March has come in more like a Lamb than a Lion. The only real downer is that the winds, when they did arrive, tended to be easterlies, straight off the sea and straight at the garden. Those days even if bright were bitterly cold.

The garden is slowly reawakening after months of slumber. Perennials are pushing through the earth, low clumps of fresh growth giving a tell that longer and warmer days are just around the corner. From branches cut back hard in autumn, Elder black lace is sprouting dark new growth. The flowers of Ribes are starting to open, the first Bumblebees are being seen.

Spring in Orkney though is a slow burn start. Snowdrops are still in full flower, ditto crocus. ‘Tête-à-tête’ daffodils are fully out but no sign yet of their follow on cousins, thalia and pheasants eye, the latter of which will still be in bloom here in late May

Jacqui has been dividing and staking perennials, preparing the garden for summer. Plants that have grown too big for their space are being lifted and split. A year or two ago they would immediately be found a new home in the garden, now, with limited space, spares are potted on for a garden gate sale, stored in fish boxes picked up from the shore. 

Low growing perennials are being given corsets of alder sticks, essential support against inevitable summer gales, within a couple of weeks their twiggy restraints will be hidden by new foliage. For taller plants commercial hoops are used. For the very tallest hoops aren’t always enough, a belt and braces approach also sees them wired to the top stones of a dyke or to an old fence stab driven into the ground.

Goldfinch are here in good numbers, a charm of around forty birds clustering on feeders, most will move on but a pair or two will breed here. At the edge of the garden a song thrush is singing a claim to a patch of bramble. A rare sight this week was a single blue tit, a first for here. Starlings are also calling for mates, not so much a song as a collection of squeaks and whistles. Close cousins of myna birds they’re excellent mimics, last year we had one that had a curlew off to a tee, another did a half decent cuckoo, best of all was a bird at our first home here, managing a slightly squeaky bok-bok-bokker of a hen proudly announcing to the world that it had just laid an egg.