March Almanac

March

Even if March is still cold, wet and windy - seeming to bring yet more of the same grey winter weather we have been enduring for months, the days are still lengthening and along with this comes birdsong, fattening buds on the trees and all the other signs of spring that we look for eagerly each year. For farmers it is the sowing season and in the Christian church March is largely dominated by Lent and the approach of Easter.

Spring flowers such as primroses, daffodils and crocuses are appearing in hedges and gardens, whilst for many birds and animals March is the beginning of the breeding season. Our native daffodil is pretty, pale and delicate, quite unlike garden variety. Once widely spread across the country it isn’t nearly as common as it once was, but clumps can still be found across the western part of the country. It was affectionately known as the “daffydowndilly.” If you are in Cornwall then look out for clumps of unusual daffodils flowering oddly and in isolation along the hedgerows. These may well be the remains of heritage varieties, once the mainstay of the Cornish flower industry, but dumped along road edges during

WW2 when the flower fields were given over to food production.The gambolling, leaping, boxing and chasing antics of hares at this time of the year gave rise to the expression “Mad as a March Hare” But this behaviour is just part of their mating rituals and isn’t solely

“I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o'er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.”

William Wordsworth, 1807

confined to March as their breeding season extends from January to October. You’re more likely to spot hares behaving in this way in early spring however, before the crops and hay meadows grow tall enough to screen them from view. Early morning and evening are the best times to go looking for hares as this is when they’re at their most active. And if you should spot two mad March hares boxing, they will probably be males fighting over a female discouraging an unwanted suitor.

I always feel that yellow is the colour of early spring - think of bright golden-yellow daffodils, primroses, winter aconites and yellow brimstone butterflies. And, if we’re lucky there may also be some bright crisp spring sunshine to enjoy - if we can dodge the showers that is - whether of rain, hail or snow! Indeed blizzards are not unknown in Britain this month - in 1891 the Great Blizzard raged across the southern half of the

country for four days and nights with snowdrifts reaching depths of twenty feet here in the West Country. Trains were buried in these drifts, one remained immobile for two whole days before it was located and the passengers rescued. Several people froze to death, thousands of sheep and cattle died and in the English Channel 220 people were drowned in 65 separate shipwrecks. The snow didn’t finally vanish from the high ground of Dartmoor until June.

March 5 brings St Piran’s Day. Piran is one of Cornwall’s most popular saints who lived in Cornwall sometime around the mid fifth century. He was claimed as the patron saint of Cornish tin miners and they regularly took this day off work in his honour, although the only detail of their celebrations that has survived is that they always got very drunk! Saint Piran's Flag, a white cross on a black background, traditionally the emblem of the Cornish tin miners, is the Cornish national flag.

However St Piran’s Day is eclipsed by that of St Patrick, possibly the most internationally celebrated of all saints days, which falls on the seventeenth of this month. Again little is known about his life, but its’ believed that he was born in Roman Britain in the fourth century before being kidnapped by Irish pirates and shipped off as a slave. After escaping six years later he became a Christian priest and then a bishop, eventually returning to Ireland where he played a major role in converting the country to Christianity.

Historically the Lenten restrictions o n

eating and drinking were lifted for his festival - perhaps a reason why he became so popular!

Back in Somerset, by the middle of the month the hedgerows around our village are beginning to bloom, decked with first blackthorn blossom (which often heralds a cold snap), followed by hawthorn, and, later in the season, wild honeysuckles and dog roses. At the base of the hedges you can see fresh green growth - the bright green of young nettle tips is particularly prominent, though you will also see violets, primroses and again, later in the season, bluebells will begin to appear.

Walking quietly along a hedge as dusk falls, listening to the rustling of small creatures and the final notes of birdsong, whilst smelling the fresh scents of damp earth and new-growing plants gives a sense like nothing else can of nature preparing for a new growing season ahead.

Easter often falls during the month of March - although not this year. A complicated ecclesiastic formula dictates that Easter Sunday should be celebrated on the Sunday immediately following the first full moon after the spring equinox unless that day itself is a Sunday which delays the celebration of Easter by another week. The earliest that Easter Day can fall is March 22, and the latest more than a full month later on April 25. (This year Easter Sunday falls on April 17). But here in the UK the real day to celebrate is the day the clocks go forward and British Summer Time begins. Overnight the winter gloom is banished and we experience an instant feeling of well-being.

“The boys are up the woods with day To fetch the daffodils away, And home at noonday from the hills They bring no dearth of daffodils.”

A E Housman (18591936)