Seizing the moment on a currently rare March morning, forecast to be dry and sunny after much rain, cloud and wind during the first fortnight of this highly variable month, Fiona had plotted a circular route centred around the coastal hamlet of Cwmtydu. Click here for a google satellite map of the area. Parking just above St. Tysilio’s church, the walk begins with a marvellous plunge down a steep stepped path into the wooded, fern filled valley of Afon Soden. Halfway down was a new temporary sign indicating that the land on the sunnier, Northern slope of the cwm is being managed to protect and extend potential habitat for the nationally very rare Pearl-bordered fritillary, Boloria euphrosyne, butterfly. We’ll have to return in April or May and see if we can manage to see any.

Climbing back out of the valley, the walk takes you more gradually uphill again, and towards the coastal path. It was while passing through one of the rather overgrown small fields attached to the farm at Caerllan, that I first spotted a lump of white foam on the grass. On a perfect sunny day, and with a chilling strong South Westerly wind, I couldn’t immediately work out why this foam was there. However, in the 5 minutes it took for us to walk  down towards the coastal cliffs, over grass very tightly cropped by a group of ponies, the reason became clear. Sea foam was being generated way below on the cove’s beach, where the water of incoming waves was being whipped by the wind into the whitest of froths, which was then plastered onto the surrounding rocks and beach. Occasionally, a strong gust would lift off chunks of foam, break it into smaller pieces, and then blow it up, above the cliffs and inland. Strangely neither of us could recall seeing such a wonderful phenomenon before.

I don’t know whether there is a name for such small pieces of windblown sea foam. Perhaps there should be? Spindrift and spume are both words relating to spray or foam whipped off waves by strong winds. I discovered that Leucothea (Leucothoe, Leukotheo) was, in ancient mythology, a Greek sea goddess of spindrift, click here for more. We have 3 different forms of the evergreen shrub Leukothoe growing in the garden, though I wasn’t previously aware of this connection with the ancient and divine. Possibly so called because of the pendant racemes of whitish flowers that top the glossy leaves in spring. A valuable gap filling addition in our woodland garden, though quietly unspectacular, and one of those plants that suffered here in last year’s drought and heatwave.

But back to the chunks or lumps of windblown foam. There certainly should be a noun to describe them. Chunks, or lumps are heavily inappropriate.

A lighter, spirit-like word would be better. In the absence of anything else, (please enlighten me anyone, if I’m missing something) I propose ffloss, (of sea foam). With a nod to the Welsh language, alliteration, and the text below, and with a necessary hint of lightness and air.

The sight of bursts of windblown ffloss racing inland over close cropped grass and rusty bracken immediately had both Fiona and I thinking of the verse she’d included in the handwritten anthology birthday book of spells and poetry, which she’d made and presented to me, for my 21st birthday.

The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew, 

The furrow followed free; 

We were the first that ever burst 

Into that silent sea.  

 

From Part two of ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’, and just before the perhaps better known:

 

Water, water, every where, 

And all the boards did shrink; 

Water, water, every where, 

Nor any drop to drink. 

 

Our walk continued with the climb up from Castell Bach bay and down once more into Cwmtydu, and as we neared the gravelly cove, an unfamiliar thin strange cry snagged the wind’s roar. I swung the camera round thinking it might again be the kestrel, Falco tinnunculus, returning, but instead suspected, and later confirmed by the very thin pink tinged beak, that it was a chough, Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax.

And shortly after, for comparison, the chunkier form of a raven, Corvus corax, also battling, or was that actually relishing, staying in one piece in the buffeting wind?

And people? None save a couple with friendly collie, chasing a ball on the seething beach. I notice that Castell Bach bay has the grand total of just two, 5 star google reviews, compared with a couple of hundred for Cwmtydu. Walk there and enjoy it, whatever the weather, while you can, and see why this site was chosen around 300 BC by ancient Celts for an early hill fort.

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Last September I’d very sensibly opted to make planting of the 1,000 Snake’s-head fritillary, Fritillaria meleagris, bulbs which arrived in the bulb order, my first priority. I think I’d read that the success rate for planting dry fritillary bulbs wasn’t that high, but in any case, it was a case of kicking planting off, with something small and easy, since I was still a little limited in movement, post hernia surgery.

Over the last 10 days I’ve been fascinated to see how they’re now starting to emerge – much earlier than anticipated, but I guess this is in part because of the often observed effect with bulbs planted “dry”, as opposed to “in the green”, of flowering much earlier than normal in the year after planting.

SNAKESHEAD BALLERINA

Do you enjoy the view?

Now you’ve settled in this distant land.

Ripped from level flats. Dried. Trapped and plastic netted.

Boxed and Shipped. Twice. Waiting.

 

Torn and tipped and rattled,

Till grubby gloved finger prods

You into shaley soil, beneath the woven

Green, green, grassy thatch

Of this, now relocated, home.

 

Resting a while, you shun the winter

Storms. Sheltered, if you can call it that.

With worms and Leather-jacketed grubs, as odd bedfellows.

And everywhere those fragile fungal hair fine strands, which never

Touched you, intimately, in former, sterile poldered soil.

 

The rain does it. Works its magic spell,

And secretly, hidden, your roots stake

Foreign claim in this strange sloping hillside turf.

And now plumped up, yet still unsure, unsafe, you peep

In ones and twos. Refreshed and hibernated.

 

Almost invisible, amidst the moss sponged mat.

Does the moon encourage you? Or teeming stars?

Or fleeting sunlight’s warming rays? Or rain? And rain? And rain?

Or Stormcock’s springtime serenades, from dying larch’s crown?

 

Impossibly fragile, awkward even, you spear up, and through.

Then flop, as if diseased, or poisoned. Your tiny virgin’s skirt

Flirting with muddy worm cast earth, once freed

From clasping tight, that leafy

Emerald sheath.

 

But where’s the symmetry of Tenby’s best?

You can’t decide how many leafy limbs should grow.

Or how to place them, off your brown stained trunk.

Or should your skirts be twinned. Or white?

Or whether framing devilish horns are fashionable.

Up here.

 

So slink. And flopsy leaves splay everywhere,

Deformed and bent, impossibly double. Yet wait!

Your confidence returns, and gaining height,

With ballerina poise you stretch those five, or six, or seven, or nine…

You can’t agree just how many leaves should count.

 

But curvaceous guttered green,

Thin, and trim, to catch what counts as daylight,

They channel beating rain or dew; the slender stem,

Improbably, still fully bent.

Inverted perfect U.

 

And blushing,

Dye your stretching cloth with chequered burgundy stain. And

White. And inner green. And then throw caution to March’s

Treacherous tunes, pick up your skirt, raise it aloft,

And hang. Seductively swaying. Loose. And wide.

And wait.

 

Will such charms lure bumbling local ladies?

And, fecundity assured, flood late June’s field?

Profligate with papered, embryo’d, and straw tinged, pale confetti,

Spilt from split six-sided barrels now upstanding, tall,

All trace of immature contortion long forgotten.

 

The rusty sorrel seeds will mingle, quietly, when shed amidst

The clangs and clatter of gay, hay making toil.

Anaesthetised with such sweet vernal fumes,

They’ll lie. Patient, for seduction’s retribution

Once aftermath recovery and cloven hooves return.

 

Then pressed down hard, into that mossy bed, they slumber.

‘Til winter’s chill stirs change, and starts the ticking clock face.

Now activated, the race for life is primed.

Moisture seeps and swells, and sensing growth,

Your freed radicle explodes.

 

Sweet germination.

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It’s a particularly exciting time of the year to see what seedlings are emerging.

Not just of those seeds saved and sown in pots, but more particularly those in various areas of the garden where seed has fallen naturally, or been collected and scattered by this flower obsessed gardener.

For the first time it looks like I have decent germination from some Sidalceas, which we always enjoy in the magic terrace garden, and where different forms can probably extend the interest, since the lovely flowers rarely seem to continue for much more than 2 weeks.

The jury is out on my saved Primula sieboldii. I fear that many seed may have germinated in late autumn, and then been killed in the brief but very hard frosts we had in late October.  (Although since I wrote this, it does look like a few more seedlings just emerging top left, to join an overwintered one, bottom right). I read, too late for last year on the excellent Barnhaven Primulas website, that they suggest saving the seed, and delaying sowing until November to try to avoid this risk. You can buy seed from them, and their sowing guide seems very clear, so I’ll include the link for anyone thinking of trying this next year. Click here.

I’ll try to post again about these lovely spring plants, which so far seem to be thriving in our very damp conditions, and bulking up nicely.

Some Devil’s-bit Scabious, Succisa pratensis, seeds have possibly germinated from locally collected seed, to supplement those scattered in our lower wet meadow, and which are already beginning to establish there.

But my biggest delight is seeing bulb seedlings, and even a few flowers of Muscari latifolium, popping up around the garden. I’m completely hopeless at recording where I scatter such saved seeds, but the usually single, almost tulip like leaf of this species of Muscari is unmistakable, with its ruddy tinged leaf base, and the attractive Oxbridge two tone blue flower spike, which wows the bees on a sunny day.

As is typical with many bought in bulbs, few of the original several hundred planted in the terrace garden have survived, but sufficient seed is produced, that we might in time be able to create our own genetic pool of plants, which enjoy growing in our particular conditions.

There are so many single leaf seedlings appearing this year, it’s tricky to be certain what many of them are, other likely possibilities being the excellent Narcissus ‘Topolino’, or Camassia quamash (esculenta). But given seedling survival should be brilliant because of the current dearth of slugs, another few years should see this cohort of plants taking over as the parents reach the end of their often frustratingly short lives.

At least that’s the hoped for plan!