Page 17 - BR March 2024 - converted

March 2024 March 2024

OVER THE HILL

Today is a beautiful warm sunny day, which has
arrived after what first thing this morning
appeared to be a hard frost. Fortunately the
frost rapidly disappeared, leaving us with
sunshine but how many days this winter have
we seen a frost. The climate has changed
dramatically from the time I remember seventy
plus years ago.
Now we are seeing more and more snowdrops
and celandines in flower in the wild and the
daffodils in flower both in the wild and in the
garden and the leaves of numerous other bulbs
in the garden showing very early signs of
growth. Some hawthorn bushes are in leaf and
blackthorns are in blossom. Hazel catkins are
showing very early growth and look extremely
heavy with pollen setting up a wonderful,
colourful, yellow, hanging male organ ready to fertilise the female florets, which
hopefully will result in a wonderful nut harvest for mankind and all the wildlife
which use them. As I think back those seventy odd years I remember, those nuts
were harvested by the red squirrels and we would see them in action in all the
woodlands. I remember in the areas of Buriton, just north of the Southdowns and
those of Blackmoor Eststate some eight miles further north,both in my home county
of Hampshire.
At Buriton the village of my birth, we the young boys of the village, would travel on
foot for miles across farmland and woodland in “gangs” of four to eight in number,
especially during the six weeks of the school’s holidays. We respected the
countryside and were never in trouble with farmers and land owners and despite
being aged from six years to fifteen, we would leave home at around nine a clock
in the morning and not come back until
tea time, that is between four and five a
clock in the afternoon. These were of
course the equivalent to school time hours
and so our parents or in my case
grandparents, were not at all worried
about our absence from civilization. Often
we would return home with bunches of wild
flowers, hazel nuts, chestnuts, wild
strawberries, mushrooms and of course
horse chestnuts or conkers. Playing
“conkers” was a wonderful way of

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