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Grantham RiverCare looks at the simple pleasures found in the world around us




Lifting our heads upwards, as we do occasionally, our curious gaze is met by a troubled world… writes Grantham RiverCare’s Ian Simmons in the latest Tales of the Riverbank column.

Perhaps you feel the same? Wherever we look, at home or abroad, it seems that life gets more puzzling, complicated and dangerous with every passing day. We don’t know about you, but we don’t watch the news anymore. However, despite squeezing our eyes tightly shut, the bad news creeps into our lives.

From left: Ian Simmons, John Knowles, Cate Holborn, David Martin
From left: Ian Simmons, John Knowles, Cate Holborn, David Martin

As you will recall from ‘Tales’ passim, it is a well researched fact that bad vibes can be replaced with good by simply turning away from the urban jungle surrounding us, with all that it brings, and spending more time in nature. Simple pleasures.

Despite the changing climate we seem to be experiencing across the country - wetter winters, drier summers, both with greater intensities - which we have highlighted repeatedly like a cracked record, there are still things that ground us in the here and now.

One such is the welcome return of migrating swallows (from Africa) and swifts (from Asia) who can be seen arcing gracefully across the summer skies. These remarkable birds come ‘home’ every year with a regularity that confirms our links with the passing seasons and previous years.

Confusion regarding identification often mixes the two birds up. Swallows have a long two pronged tail and pale bellies, swifts have shorter tails and darker colouring. Confusingly, house martins look like swifts, but have a white underside and no long tail compared with swallows.

While these are perhaps the most striking and obvious actors in our grand story, there are other regular occasions that mark the changing seasons.

A particular favourite of ours is the annual tradition of hay making. Allowing cut grass to dry for farmers to bale and store it for winter livestock feeding provides the wonderful ‘meadow sweet’ aroma that always makes it onto the list of our favourite smells. Unfortunately, we do not have many livestock farms who use hay around Grantham, so we don’t often see that or the practice of silage making, collecting grass and allowing it to ‘pickle’ through bacterial fermentation.

The foragers among us always keep a close eye on the development of the elder and blackberry bushes around our town at this time of year. The changing of elderflowers to elderberries facilitates the autumnal processing of syrups, jams and drinks to set us up for winter.

However, you have to be quick if you want the best blackberry crop as keen pickers always seem to beat us to the plumpest berries!



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