I know from recent correspondence with readers that I haven't been the only person scanning the skies with increasing desperation. What began as a casual glance has become a look of yearning: where, oh where, are the swallows and house martins? By most accounts, our house martins were at least a fortnight overdue-the house sparrows, opportunistic squatters, had taken over a number of the martins' old nests for their own uses.
This spring is very different from recent years; the ash tree has beaten the oak into leaf for the first time in many, many years (‘Ash before Oak, we're in for a soak; Oak before Ash we're in for a splash'). I haven't heard a single cuckoo. Had something terrible happened to the martins?
Last Saturday was beautiful, and, if you have a garden, you will have been gardening. I was tending runner beans, when, suddenly, a tiny torpedo slanted across the azure sky and up into the eaves of the house. I gave an involuntary yelp of delight; my house martins had arrived. I felt honoured to have them back. Never had the phrase better late than never felt more appropriate. The lack of the normal south-westerly would appear to be to blame.
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Chelsea Flower Show 2025: What else to do in SW3 if you're coming to the world's greatest flower showThere's more to Chelsea than just the Flower Show so we've rounded up some of the best places to eat, stay and shop.
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Uniquely unique? The Yorkshire grain silos transformed into a home that's a symphony in glass, steel and curvesAmid the beautiful countryside of North Yorkshire, on the edge of the Castle Howard Estate, The Silos is a property for which the word 'house' simply doesn't cut it. And that's not the only way in which it's made us throw out the dictionary.
