Cookham Idyll

A couple of weekends ago now (how quickly the summer goes) R and I caught the train to Cookham to spend an afternoon walking along the drowsy bank of the River Thames and climb Winter Hill, where we would picnic in honour of the fullness of summer. Follow the Thames west of London up towards it’s source and you will barely recognise it as the murky waterway that bisects the city’s heart; indeed, follow it as far west as Oxford and it has another name – the Isis.

The day was hot and sunny with a refreshing breeze as we approached the flank of the Hill along a towpath riotous with wildflowers. The breeze however kept dragonflies and damselflies to a minimum, though we did get to see this little marvel, a female Beautiful Damoiselle.

Cookham is famous as the home of the visionary artist Stanley Spencer, who painted biblical scenes as if they had occurred in his native village. After viewing some of his oddly hallucinatory work in the Stanley Spencer Museum the landscape, already vivid in the summer heat took on a strange intensity as if I were looking directly through the artists eyes. Cookham is also a home to the arcane practice of Swan Upping, the ceremonial rounding up of mute swans by the Queen’s Swan Markers, the Worshipful Company of Vintners and the Worshipful Company of Dyers. Cookham, in short,  is as beautifully English as it gets, and more than mildly eccentric to boot.

One of the best reasons to visit this part of the world (apart from it’s singular beauty) is the chance to see Red Kites. Once almost extinct in the UK and still globally threatened, these spectacular birds ride the skies like no other bird I’ve ever seen, and around Cookham and Winter Hill there is a sizeable local population. On a previous visit we’d been startled by a tawny flash erupting from a wheat field right in front of us as one of these birds shot into the sky, leaving us gasping with disbelief. On that occasion we didn’t know that these birds were locally common, and while eating our picnic on the hill’s crest we shook our heads in wonder while watching more than one bird flirting with the breeze at eye level no more than twenty yards away. On this visit we got our first sighting while in the beer garden of the Bounty Pub,  taking turns with the binoculars to watch a soaring pair while we slapped on sun cream, drank a sustaining coffee and prepared for our climb.

Don’t get me wrong; the climb is hardly arduous – I don’t know for sure but I’d be surprised if Winter Hill tops two hundred feet. It’s steep though, and the sun was bright and harsh. Lush vivid green meadows nodding with wildflowers clung to the slope and as we climbed it’s steepest point our hot faces drew level with Harebells, Clustered Bellflowers,  Scabious. Butterflies commute busily between patches of flowers and at the top rabbits, unafraid, graze near the sheltering brambles.

The view from the top of Winter Hill on a beautiful late summer day repays the modest effort a thousandfold – the flat lands of the Thames roll out like a richly patterned carpet, and in the dancing shade of oak and ash we sat down to drink it all in.

No picture could do justice to the panorama of many coloured patchwork fields, the toy like train on it’s track, the subtle glint of the Thames below. We unpacked our picnic of strawberries and wine and toasted the sun dazed landscape.

Exploring the crest of the hill I was delighted to find some fat new Parasol Mushrooms growing up through dried out cow pats – Parasol mushrooms are good eating, but I’m always a little nervous about id’ing mushrooms in the field so we left them unmolested.

Further along I found this beastie gorging it’s-self on Ragwort. It’s the gaudy caterpillar of the just as gaudy Cinnabar moth, and it’s football jersey colouration serves as a warning to predators – keep away, I taste bad, I will make you very sick! It’s food plant – Ragwort – is full of poisonous alkaloids which the caterpillar stores safely in it’s body, rendering it, too, poisonous. They have a voracious appetite and will completely devour their host plant down to the ground, which will sometimes result in the caterpillars turning cannibal in the absence of anything else to eat. As this was the only Ragwort plant to be seen, and as it had already been quite comprehensively munched, and as there was only one caterpillar doing the munching… well I have to come to the conclusion that this greedy creature may well have been the sole survivor of a cannibal feast.  Enough of the grisly nature lesson – don’t you think our stripy friend would look well sitting on a fully opened parasol mushroom – just like the caterpillar in Alice In Wonderland? The landscape may be full of gentle beauty, but just a quick glimpse of it at a different scale reveals a strangeness to match anything Lewis Carrol dreamed up.

Eventually it was time to dawdle our way back down and catch the train back to London. We thought we’d seen everything we could possibly want to see as we strolled along the river, scanning the waters with our binoculars for nothing in particular. Then I spotted this Great Crested Grebe diving, and soon it had a plump fish in it’s beak. Curious as to why it did not eat it’s prize immediately I kept the binoculars trained on the bird and was lucky to see it swim to it’s mate and give the fish to her – she could not dive for her own dinner because their chicks were riding upon her back, their fuzzy grey heads peeking out between her wings.

Everything But What I wanted

Summer is moving on apace and as I don’t want to waste a single sunny day when it crops up, I grabbed my camera and binoculars and cycled up the River Lee after the first good forecast this week. The idea was to go dragonfly spotting, something I’ve been aching to give a whole day to, but the day itself had other plans for me.

I had a particular spot in mind, Gunpowder Park, near Waltham Abbey. I’d been there many years ago and had a vague memory of myriads of dancing insects, so having for once a specific destination in mind I set off at a brisk pace.

The towpath was deserted, surprisingly so for such a lovely day. I usually cycle the towpath slowly, mindful of pedestrians and dogs, but on this occasion there was not another soul to be seen, and I sped along. Due to my haste I will have missed a lot – I know it – just from the tantalising things that I only glimpsed like the plums glossy and ripe and good spilled across the gravel as windfall, the skulking herons, the bright flash of wildflowers. The horse meadow with it’s bright garlanded hedgerow coaxed me to pull up and drink in it’s beauty, the scent of buddlea and wild sweet peas heady and intoxicating.

Usually I’d stop alongside those pylons to search for Little Owls (at one point I was seeing so many and so regularly there that I just called them “pylon birds”) but this time I was on a mission, and thinking that I could easily stop there on the way home I hurried by. A bank of honeysuckle flowers tempted me to pause, but I was uncharacteristically hasty in getting back in the saddle.

Ever feel like you’ve jinxed yourself?  All those things I told myself I’d stop and look at properly on the way back never did get looked at after all, which proves to me that being in a hurry to get anywhere is just a great big waste of NOW.  Hurrying discourages curiosity, blinkers us to the unexpected.  And on I sped, intoxicated with the swift breeze and the scrunch of gravel under my tyres. The towpath finally emerged from beneath the roaring M25, ducked under one more road and rolled out into parkland. Was this Gunpowder Park? I wasn’t sure, and a quick rummage in my saddlebag confirmed that I’d forgotten to bring a map. No problem! It would surely be signposted and besides, I could always ask for directions.

I got off the bike and strolled slowly along the riverbank in hope of spotting a dragonfly or two, but the wind was strong and I could not find the sheltered places where the dragons and damsels would be patrolling. Still, the river was beautiful, a slow, sinuous dancing river, and the weeds under the water swayed slowly like mermaids tresses. So many wildflowers I did not recognise! I got down on my belly to take pictures, to the mild alarm of strolling families who couldn’t see anything special about the clump of weeds I was prostrated by.  I’m truly glad I spent a bit of slow time here, because when I got up and got back on my bike in search of Gunpowder Park and dragonflies, I realised something wasn’t quite right. Oh no – no WAY. I had a puncture. Normally this would not be an issue but I think you can guess what else I’d forgotten. That’s right -  I’d set out to cycle miles out of London over relatively rough ground and not even brought a pump with me. And as I’d forgotten my map, I had no idea where the nearest train station was. Where was everybody? Now that I needed to ask directions the park seemed suddenly deserted. In search of directions or even a sign I followed the nearest road and stumbled upon a very unfriendly looking gated community on the edge of town; big ugly houses with big ugly cars parked in all the drives, completely sterile and unhelpfully deserted. But here I found a genuine and lovely surprise.

A flowering ornamental shrub was by some magic growing wild at the side of the path, and on it’s flowers danced an astonishing number of Painted Lady butterflies. The nectar laden flower heads tossed in the strong breeze and the insects clung to the blossoms determinedly, everything moving back and forth as if being pulled by a tide. Bees hummed industriously between the butterflies – everything was so intensely involving that the mystery of how I was ever going to get home seemed very far away.

I know most people in the UK have been seeing these lovely butterflies in great numbers since their mass migration here earlier this spring, but I’ve been singularly unlucky and seen hardly any. To find dozens of them all in one place was plenty consolation for the lack of dragonflies and the long, hot, unpleasant slog home.

Mini Garden Safari

Often when I go into the garden even for the shortest of times I’ll be amazed at the wildlife that inhabits our tiny patch of London soil. Just this afternoon as I hung out my washing to dry I was surprised by a comma butterfly landing on the laundry pile, briefly sunning itself then with a jaunty flick of its distinctive ragged wings moving on to a neighbours nettle patch. Any time you step outside at this time of year you may be witness to some fleeting wonder. Gardening gets you closer to the small things, and on a sunny day this week, tending our broad bean plants I felt I was on a mini safari.

The striking broad bean flowers are a favourite of bumble bees, and along with the Comfrey flowers they keep our garden buzzing. It was almost hard to work around them there were so many bees, but they are docile creatures and don’t seem to care much what humans are up to.

Miniature dramas revealed themselves one by one as we examined the plants. A large spider had made a loose tent in the leaves to protect herself and the silken egg case which she carried beneath her body.

She had picked a good place – when the spiderlings hatch they will wreak havoc on the many tiny pests our plants are host to, and so she is most welcome here. The tightly packed top leaves of the plants hid an astonishing multitude of earwigs, and ants scurried up and down the long stalks looking harassed.  Wherever I looked it seemed something was crawling, flying or trying to hide amongst the leaves and stems. A male Oedemera nobilis, or Thick Legged Flower Beetle waved his antennae vaguely while I admired the brilliant iridescent green of his body. Only the male has those bulbous back legs!

I was probably out in the garden for ten minutes at most, and yet the small task of weeding gave me the chance to learn of a new creature (that beetle and his gorgeous gold/green tailcoat). Most importantly, it impressed upon me the truth that wherever you go there are small wonders thriving and living out their dramas, as extraordinary and worthy of our notice as any creature of the African plains.

Hunting the elusive Bee orchid

Whilst doing the seed bomb workshop a couple of weeks ago I discovered a delightful fact – allegedly there are Bee Orchids growing on Tottenham Marshes about a mile and a half from my home, and they are due to start blooming right now. How could I resist such a lure? I’ve been neglecting the marshes lately, so I got on my bike and went to see what I could see.

What I saw, alas, was not Bee Orchids. It hardly mattered though, since I was out and about on the last glorious sunny day of this summer so far, and what I did find was rather wonderful in it’s own right.

Zooming down Coppermill Lane through a dense tunnel of rank vegetation, assaulted by the shrill voices of wrens and the scree of nestlings in every tall shrub I wondered why I don’t do this every day. When I got to the drainage ditches at Springfield marina the air was filled with zipping electric blue sparks of Enallagma Cyathigerum – the Common Blue Damselfly. I sat down beside the water and watched their nuptial dances, and was lucky enough to find these two in their extraordinary lovers embrace. If you view mating damselflies from the right angle their joined bodies make a perfect heart shape. Most bodies of water on a still sunny day will yield views of these lovely creatures right now in the UK, and they are well worth looking for. I also saw a glorious Libellula Depressa – or Broad-bodied Chaser, a male dragonfly with a body the colour of powdered and bottled summer skies. Naturally he teased me by flying from his territorial perch every time I got him into focus but I don’t go on these adventures just for photographic trophies and it’s just as well – I would have been deeply frustrated that day!

After half an hour of happy damselfly and tadpole watching I got back on the bike and rode along the River Lea navigation towpath. Shoals of small fish swarmed in the still water and mute swans fussed over their huge nests, and overhead swallows chattered. I was at Tottenham marshes at last.

It’s not much to look at, perhaps, to some people. A swathe of rank long vegetation sandwiched between a busy road, allotments and a canal and with pylons, gasometers, bus depots and factories looming at it’s edges, it’s not many peoples idea of a wildlife paradise. But it’s truly wild, and this liminal post industrial landscape is where the revolution starts, you mark my words. It’s places like these that are home to undiscovered beauty, the covert reclamation of land by all the other living things besides the human. Of course it’s managed to some extent, but the beauty of places like these is that things slip in under the radar – this kind of land is the sort that will suddenly sprout, unexpectedly, a beautiful flower from seeds or rhizomes that have slept in the earth for years.

The air was thick with the scent of elderflower and pollen tickled my eyes and dusted my feet. The voices of many warblers made one territorial claim after another, each responding to the last in a singing chain, a necklace of song. I wheeled the bike along and searched in vain through the long, tangled vegetation.

Was I sad that I didn’t find any Bee Orchids?  Not at all, not when so many other beautiful things crossed my path. The bee orchids got me out of the house and may have been my stated aim, but their coy refusal to show themselves led me to other secrets every bit as marvellous.

Seed Bombs!

Last Saturday I was lucky enough to get invited to help run a seed bomb workshop at  Haringay Independence Day. It was a perfect sunny summer day and we had our hands dirty for most of it, as well as getting to attend other workshops, jam sessions, swap gardening knowledge and give and get stuff for free. But let’s cut to the chase; what on earth is a seed bomb?

A seedbomb is a convenient way of sowing seed on derelict land in the hope of improving the environment either aesthetically, or by improving the soil, by encouraging native wildflowers or even planting vegetables or other edible goodies. Seed bombing probably came out of the Community Garden Movement that sprung up in New York in the 1970’s, when ordinary people decided to do something positive about the derelict land that blighted the city’s heart. They planted clandestine gardens in vacant lots, utilising seed bombs as a start when access to the desired land was proving difficult.  New Yorkers were not the first to practice the creative art of Guerilla Gardening which has a venerable history wherever derelict land and human need have coincided, but seed bombing was a technique the New Yorkers made their own.  So, what makes a good seed bomb, and why is it a “bomb” exactly?

A seedbomb consists of three things – the seeds, a pinch of peat free compost or topsoil, and the outer bomb casing for want of a better description. In our demonstration we used London clay for this,  which is perfect because it’s free (If you live in London you just dig down a metre or so beyond all the builders rubble and crap and there it is, a rich seam of beautiful clay) and also because when it’s dry, it becomes brittle and shatters easily. If you do not have a local clay soil, you can use newspaper pulped in a blender to make papier mache mixture instead. I guess you could even use a mixture of flour and water…

So, you need:-

• Clay or papier mache
• a small amount of rich topsoil or peat free compost
• seeds of your choice
• a bit of paper to wrap each seedbomb in

Grab a lump of clay or papier mache about the size of a golf ball or a little smaller, and roll it into a ball. Next, poke your finger hard into the clay or papier mache until you’ve made a hole. Then, put a small pinch of your topsoil or compost into the hole… it only needs to be a tiny amount. Now you are ready to add your seeds – you can mix up your flower varieties if you like but a favourite seed bomb flower of mine is poppies. Once you’ve tucked the seeds into the hole, close it up by smoothing clay over the hole or adding more papier mache, and roll the ball in your hands again to make it round. Then put your seedbomb somewhere safe to dry, like a sunny window ledge.

Make as many as you like! When your seedbomb is completely dry, it is ready to use.

How do I use it? And you still haven’t explained why it’s a bomb!

Well,  seed grenade is probably a more appropriate name, since what you are going to do is throw your seedbomb on the ground really hard in order to make it shatter. In the act of shattering, your seeds and their little bit of nutrient soil are dispersed much better than if you tried to sow them by hand and it’s much less fiddly… you can plant hundreds of seeds on the move and in an instant – you don’t even have to break your stride! So once your papier mache or clay balls are completely dry, put them in a bag in your pocket and go out looking for targets.

Where should I seedbomb? Any small neglected patch of land. Be creative in your choices! The dirt around a street tree might be a good place, or the long grass near some railings where the mower can never reach, or a neglected municipal flower bed. Grass verges around car parks that need brightening up. Traffic islands and roadside verges are great fun to seedbomb from a bicycle and the extra speed means they explode all the better! If you don’t have time to tend your garden – throw some down there!

Is there anywhere I shouldn’t seedbomb? Seedbombing is best done in neglected places frequented by humans – nature reserves or wild places should not be seedbombed! They may have delicate ecosystems that could get disrupted by introducing new plants.

What kind of seed should I use? Plants that don’t need a lot of looking after are best. If you just want to add a splash of colour to a neglected spot I would always recommend poppies. Poppies are a seedbombers friend because they thrive in neglected soil and wherever you live in the world there will probably be a native species of poppy you can use seeds from, so you are helping wildlife too! In fact, using native wildflowers is always better,  because they don’t need looking after and will not create a pest problem.  In the UK I’d recommend looking for a wildflower meadow mix as these will contain beautiful colourful plants that will do well in poor soil and with no extra effort once sown.

It didn’t shatter properly! Don’t worry, you can help it on it’s way by crushing the seedbomb underfoot if you can get to it; the weather, passing animals and insects will probably finish the dispersal for you. If it’s at least got a good crack running through it do nothing; the next time it rains the water will split it apart and disperse it naturally.

But what if my seeds grow and the council comes along and mows everything up, that would be horrible! The trick is be prolific in your seedbombing and don’t be too precious – of all the millions of seeds created by nature only the tiniest percentage survive to become thriving plants and for whatever reason this may well be true of your seed bomb babies. Don’t be downhearted… keep trying! Even if only a few plants make it you’ve brightened the world a tiny bit. There is a lovely saying – “If I knew the world would end tomorrow I would plant an apple tree today”.

We made hundreds of seedbombs on Saturday, and there was a handful left over that nobody took away. I’m going to look out for suitable sites to bomb and report back when I’m done!

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