Country diary: singing in the green rain

Wenlock Edge, Shropshire: Nature is unfolding into spring, freeing itself from the windings of winterA blackbird in the sycamore faces into what the poet-novelist Mary Webb might call "green rain", this spring drizzle suspended in the trees that feels so enchanted it is "hung poised, forgetting how to fall".We are at the unfastening. Each bud, each syrinx, each wing undoing, freeing itself from the windings of isolation. Earth-queen bumblebees, hefty and matriarchal, cannon in cool damp air with the glimmer of damson, cherry-plum and blackthorn into the first white pulse. A peacock butterfly shaken out of its dream flies the length of a field hedge into the celandine sunlight of our own. Continue reading...