I met a little friend at the hatch today, our little dipper with his semaphore eyelids, blinking at me wary but not afraid, I had come for a soothing, to rest my belly on the concrete and feel the river pass below and this little guy kept me company for a while, until I moved and he flew off following the river to the other side.
At first I mistook this little guy at first for a rat (someone yesterday had told me a story of being surprised one day to find one of the yellow the bridge ‘moving’ in rats) St Anne’s lace is making its baskets and holding the droplet of blood, and the Rosebay willow herb is beginning to shoot its fireworks skywards, The Golum was salivating in the woods, and Mama duck was on the pond with her latest brood, this may be her second or third or fourth or fifth clutch – I read that waterfowl lay between March and July, one egg a day in clutches of 12 and can lay between 100 -300 eggs a year, for 9 years, that’s a lot of ducks. The yellow Irises are unfurling their flags and another caged square awaiting its bin. I count 3, all in the East end. The clippings are piling up in the alley again.