Reasons to be cheerful - Swallows and Rhubarb!

The swallows are back!  I look out for them arriving every year and I saw my first one this week, swooping through the dusky sky, no doubt relieved to have arrived safely.  It’s swapped red, African dirt for the green hills of Wales and right now it looks like a fair swap.  Lambs are springing like wind-up toys, cherry trees are frothy with blossom, the daffodils are bright suns shining along all the verges and the rest of the bird clan are cramming the air with their spring song.

The first birds of the season are always a delight.  When I open my back door on a chilly spring morning and hear that familiar ‘chiff-chaff, chiff-chaff,’ I break into a huge grin.  The tiny olive bird is the first of the warblers to return from Africa and soon there’ll be willow warblers, black caps, garden warblers and all the others.

And talking of ‘firsts’, this week we had the first of the rhubarb from the garden, lightly poached with a little red wine and brown sugar, delicious!

Go for a slow walk this weekend and see if you can spot a swallow - it's come a long, long way so give it a wave. 

And why not plant some rhubarb in a forgotten corner of your patch? You can just leave it to get on with the business of growing, which it will do effortlessly, and then give you juicy sticks to eat with ginger and ice cream.

To see the difference between swallows and house martins look on www.rspb.org.uk

Let me know if you see any!  Click on the blog title (Reasons to be cheerful) to bring up the comments box.  Or email me at sleepysparrow@yahoo.co.uk