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

A Short Break - Sixty Minutes from Home

Last week we holidayed all of 60 minutes away from home -  on the edge of the Menai Straits. 

Day one - from Is Helen camp site, a stone’s throw from Caernarfon Castle, we cycled past fields of glossy buttercups and verges fizzing with wild carrot to the windswept beach at Dinas Dinlle, ate mango ice cream, climbed a hill fort, drank tea in Caernarfon airport, watched tiny planes take people for an eagle's eye view of Snowdon.  Back at the campsite we watched swallows swoop for insects, and the sun set over the blue isle of Anglesey. 

Day two -  my reward for cycling to Rhyd Ddu via the Nantlle pass was a cream scone in our favourite tea room and sublime views of Snowdon all the way, complete with ant people and a miniature puffing train.

Day three – over the Menai Bridge to Llanddwyn Island. 

 ‘Nothing wins hearts like cheerfulness,’ according to Saint Dwynwen, the Welsh patron saint of lovers. She lived as a hermit on the island (I wish).  Shelly coves, wild violas, pale blue squill, sea pinks, creaking terns, it’s a special place.

‘Neither sickness nor sorrow will follow a man from Llanddwyn.’ Dafydd ap Gwyllm, 1320 -70

Sixty minutes later, we’re back home, watering courgettes, dead-heading purple pansies, smiling at the memory of crunchy sand, frothy hedgerows, squealing swifts.