Onward March!

There goes another month, and although Winter has not completely been put to bed and indeed there was a frost this morning, the worst of the cold should be over.  That said, I never dump my thermals until the end of April.

The ground has dried up much sooner than usual and I think I've missed the 'roller window' for the fields - that's the time between the very wet ground being too cloggy for the rollers and then, sometimes only days later, it being too dry for the rolling to do any good.

The snowdrops are going over, the primroses have started sprouting in the hedgerow banks and the daffodils - those that didn't flower in December! - are out and blowing around in the high winds.  I even found a cluster of daffydowndillies up in a remote south-facing hillside on Grabbist and have been wondering since how they got there.

Greenfire has started along the Exmoor lanes.  Just a tiny wavelet of grass below the hedges will soon be followed by strands of nettle and wildflower growth and in a month or so, a mass verdant climb-away will light the hawthorn buds.  When they open fully, come May, the whole world will be properly alive again.

Lambing is over for one of my friends and only just beginning for another.  Farmer Joanna wanted hers out of the way early - she's gone to Australia for a wedding now - and Farmer Caroline's season kicked off at the weekend. No signs in either flock of the awful viral disease that has struck this year - Schmallenberg - but 121 farms in the south of England have now had cases confirmed and there's nothing anyone can do except hope.  The virus, believed to be midge-borne, causes deformities in lambs, which can only be detected at lambing time.  It also affects cattle but so far the reports have been mostly in the sheep community.

No Exmoor pony foals yet - it's a bit early, although they have been known to appear at this time.   A notable one, later called 'Bat-and-Ball' was born on the village cricket pitch about ten years ago. His mother has a habit of finding great spots to drop her excess baggage!

That's your lot for now.

Oh no, not quite: Patsy has nominated me for something called a 'Sunshine Award' and although I'm not sure I deserve such a thing - let's face it I'm hardly a regular Blogger - I would quite like to accept it. But before I do I'd better find out:
a) how I cart it over here and
b) what exactly I'm meant to do afterwards.

Something about putting Things About Myself on the web for any passing T,D or H to read and something about Passing On the Sunshine.  We'll see!  This little backwater blog of mine doesn't get many passers-by and I'm quite happy with that. It is, after all, just a Memory-Jog- Blog for the various Celiae Personae (don't ask, but I am Not Alone and neither are you!) rather than anything more serious or useful.