Dear Readers, you might find it odd that I’m writing about cucumbers in the middle of winter, but I am currently reading Jenny Uglow’s wonderful biography of Gilbert White, the vicar of Selborne who she describes as ‘The First Great Nature Writer’. White was writing at the end of the eighteenth century, and in February 1781 he was much exercised by growing cucumbers. Generally, this vegetable was seen as being the food of poor people – Uglow reports that tailors were called ‘cucumbers’ because this was the only thing they could afford to eat once their rich customers had left town for the summer. A popular quip was that cucumbers should be ‘thinly sliced, dressed with vinegar and salt and pepper, and then thrown out’. They were also thought to be only good as food for animals, hence the name ‘cowcumber’.

However, cucumbers grown out of season were another thing entirely. Much like strawberries at Chrismas or asparagus in October here (though lately people have become re-attuned to eating seasonally), an early cucumber was a sign of status:  for rich estate owners, it showed that they could afford the most knowledgeable gardeners. White was intrigued by the challenge of this, although he was a poor country curate and all the gardening was done by him. He built his own cucumber frames, insulated the outside with ferns or straw, and filled them with dung. He then  topped the frames with broad panes of glass, and nurtured the whole plot carefully – adjusting the glass so that it got maximum light, wiping off the condensation, cloaking them with mats if a cold spell struck.

Cucumber competitions were held in late March, and the rules were strict: the cucumbers must have been grown outside, without artificial heat. It appears that White didn’t make the deadline, as he cut his first cucumbers in April, but he was very proud of them: one year he got forty large cucumbers from his frames, and sent thirteen to his relatives in London by coach, as they cost two shillings a piece in town, when the average worker earned about £46 a year.

What the hell is a cucumber, though? The original plant, (Cucumis sativus), comes from Asia, and is technically known as a pepo, which is the name for a plant in the gourd family with a hard rind and seeds which are not separated by hard pith as in an orange. So now we all know!

A cucumber is comprised of 95 percent water, which many of us might have guessed – its this that makes a slice of cucumber such a soothing balm if placed on the eyes after too many hours squinting at a computer screen. When I went on an Indian cookery course, the teacher explained that the cucumbers for raita should always be grated and then squeezed and squeezed until most of the water came out – a good tip for avoiding watery raita, and indeed watery tzatziki or any of the other related delicious dips. Cucumber sandwiches were the height of luxury when I was growing up, but only if you were lucky enough to go out for afternoon tea (as rare as hens’ eggs in our house). I always wondered how they managed to keep the sandwiches from going soggy, and can only assume that there was an army of cucumber cutter-uppers in the kitchen making each sandwich to order.

Anyone who has grown cucumbers knows that they just sit around looking juicy and tempting, but they are not defenceless: members of the cucumber family produce a bitter chemical called cucurbitacin, which is produced in greater quantities when the plant is under attack. The height of this is the bitter gourd, popular in Asian cooking, which is just about the most bitter thing I’ve ever eaten – clearly a taste that needs to be acquired when young. Although the bitter gourd is now popular right across Asia, it originated  in the desert regions of Africa, possibly even in good old Namibia.

While we’re on the subject of cucumbers, one of my favourite ways to eat them is as gherkins: the slight blandness of the raw vegetable is replaced with a vinegary/sweet/salty kick, and I love how different cultures have different pickling traditions. I love a ‘wally’ (a largish pickled cucumber) with my fish and chips – I can’t bear vinegar on my chips, but I love these guys! And also, little cornichons with a blini, sour cream and smoked salmon. Any other favourites? I’ve yet to hear of anyone making a cucumber dessert, though I have heard of cucumber granita/sorbet being served with savoury dishes.

And now, of course, the challenge. Is there a poem about cucumbers? And yes of course there is. Nothing that has ever happened in the whole history of the world doesn’t have a poem about it somewhere, even if the words are now lost. And this is a poem about an almost magical early cucumber, and what it means.

The Cucumber, by Nazim Hikmet

The snow is knee-deep in the courtyard
and still coming down hard:
it hasn’t let up all morning.
We’re in the kitchen.
On the table, on the oilcloth, spring —
on the table there’s a very tender young cucumber,
pebbly and fresh as a daisy.
We’re sitting around the table staring at it.
It softly lights up our faces,
and the very air smells fresh.
We’re sitting around the table staring at it,
amazed
thoughtful
optimistic.
We’re as if in a dream.
On the table, on the oilcloth, hope —
on the table, beautiful days,
a cloud seeded with a green sun,
an emerald crowd impatient and on its way,
loves blooming openly —
on the table, there on the oilcloth, a very tender young cucumber,
pebbly and fresh as a daisy.
The snow is knee-deep in the courtyard
and coming down hard.
It hasn’t let up all morning.

(trans Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk)

Source: The Vintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry

A series following the 72 British mini-seasons of Nature’s Calendar by Kiera Chapman, Lulah Ellender, Rowan Jaines and Rebecca Warren. 

Dear Readers, today is my birthday: I have my Freedom Pass, I will shortly get my pension, and I am coming to terms with the fact that I’m now an Elder. Or a Crone. Or both. I’m very happy to have lived this long, and to have seen so many things, to have had so many wonderful people to love, and who have loved me. I count myself most fortunate, and now my thoughts are turning to legacy. I think it was being called ‘Momma’ at Johannesburg Airport twice that really made me think of my responsibility now, of my role in the future. Some in my chosen family are having babies, and some are unwell, and my heart is wrung on a daily basis. I’m still pondering what the next phase of my life should contain:  I am continuing my training as a Death Doula, I am working on my book about Dad’s dementia, and this year I will finish my Open University degree, which should free up a chunk of time. Everything just seems a little more urgent now.

But onto less existential stuff – the  Big Garden Birdwatch starts this Friday, 23rd January, and runs until Sunday 25th. Let’s see if any of the birds that usually visit the garden actually turn up for the hour when I’m watching.

And here’s the piece that I did re Nature’s Calendar in 2024. It’s a celebration of feathers and feathered things.

Dear Readers, you’d have to have a heart of stone not to be moved by the plight of small garden birds here in the UK over the past few days. With temperatures well below zero here in the south, sparrows and finches and tits and robins have been hyperactive, looking for food from dawn until dusk to give them enough energy to get through the long, cold night. Many of them have transformed themselves into tiny feathery balls, using their feathers to create a honeycomb of warm air to prevent themselves from freezing.

This robin was very attentive when we visited Walthamstow Wetlands on Monday – we didn’t even have any crumbs to throw to him or her. Maybe next time I’ll take a pocket full of rehydrated mealworms.

Down feathers are not stiff like flight feathers – they are soft and flexible, and each thread of down is ten times thinner than a human hair. A single feather can contain miles of these tiny threads, which billow and form into spheres. Air is trapped between the layers of down, and warms up, providing an insulating layer, but also blocking the cold air that would otherwise sweep that warmth away. What amazing structures they are!

There are actually three kinds of down. Body down is what is keeping our friend the robin warm. Natal down is what covers the bodies of newly-hatched chicks, and is most obvious in birds who have well-developed chicks (known as precocial) such as chickens.

The third kind of down will be familiar to anyone who has been unfortunate enough to have a pigeon fly into their window. Powder down is found in a small number of different bird families, including pigeons and doves, herons, and parrots. In these birds the tips of the barbules that make up a down feather disintegrate, producing a powder – these feathers grow continuously, and are never moulted. But why? In herons, it’s thought that the powder down may help with waterproofing, and with cleaning off fish scales and other gunk, but it’s not entirely clear if this is the same in the other bird groups. What is clear is that it’s an allergen, though it’s mostly a problem for pigeon-fanciers and anyone working in aviaries or with bird collections.

In her piece in ‘Nature’s Calendar’, Rowan Jaines discusses Chaucer’s poem ‘The Parlement of Foules’, in which he describes four groups of birds, each part of a different social group represented by their feeding habits. At the top are the birds of the ravine, or birds of prey. There are the seed-eating birds, though they sit apart from the other birds so it’s hard to work out their status (definitely lower than the birds of prey though). Jaines has the worm foules (blackbirds, robins and starlings) at the bottom, though I have also read an analysis that puts the waterfowl at the bottom. However, what is clear is that robins and dunnock became symbols of the working-class, suffering through the winter – as Jaines puts it ‘puffing, whistling and working without respite’.

And here’s a John Clare poem on the robin in winter. He wrote about these birds many times, but this poem is longer than most, and there is something in his description of ‘That house where the peasant makes use of a gun’ that makes me think he is speaking a bit more widely than just some robin-killing local. ‘Grimalkin’, by the way, is a cat.

The Robin by John Clare (1793-1864)

Now the snow hides the ground little birds leave the wood
And flie to the cottage to beg for their food
While the domestic robin more tame then the rest
(With its wings drooping down and rough feathers undrest)
Comes close to our windows as much as to say
‘I would venture in if I could find a way
I’m starv’d and I want to get out of the cold
O! make me a passage and think me not bold’
Ah poor little creature thy visits reveal
Complaints such as these to the heart that can feel
Nor shall such complainings be urged in vain
I’ll make thee a hole if I take out a pane

Come in and a welcome reception thou’lt find
I keep no grimalkins to murder inclin’d
—But O! little robin be careful to shun
That house where the peasant makes use of a gun
For if thou but taste of the seed he has strew’d
Thy life as a ransom must pay for thy food
His aim is unerring his heart is as hard
And thy race tho so harmles he’ll never regard
Distinction with him boy is nothing at all
Both the wren and the robin with sparrows must fall
For his soul (tho he outwardly looks like a man)
Is in nature like wolves of the appenine clan

Like them his whole study is bent on his prey
Like them he devours what e’er comes in his way
Then be careful and shun what is meant to betray
And flie from these men-masked wolves far away
Come come to my cottage and thou shalt be free
To perch on my finger or sit on my knee
Thou shalt eat of the crumbles of bread to thy fill
And have leisure to clean both thy feathers and bill
Then come little robin and never believe
Such warm Invitations are meant to deceive
In duty I’m bound to show mercy on thee
While God dont deny it to sinners like me!

Well Readers, it’s been a busy couple of days but fortunately I found a brief moment to pop out and see what was happening in the garden. The squirrel drey in the whitebeam is coming on apace and the trees are putting on new growth. Not too much, I hope, as they were only cut back in 2024, but it is truly gratifying to see them rallying after their trim.

The clematis has been in flower for months – I rather like these small-flowered ones. Maybe I should invest in a few more? Any recommendations? And apologies for the wobbly photo.

It’s a mild-ish day, and there were honeybees on the winter honeysuckle (though no bumbles, strangely enough).

I’ve left cutting back the hemp agrimony until spring this year, and I’m rather glad I did. The fluffy flowerheads give a bit of interest at this damp time of year.

I’m definitely going to have to take a net to the duckweed, though. Holy moly. And it’s January. It didn’t really disappear this year, which surprised me as it’s been pretty cold.

Here are some gratuitous snowdrops….

Someone has left a tennis ball next to the pond. Fox maybe?

And the cyclamen that the lovely person who used to live in this house gave me (she also planted the whitebeam back in 1976) are coming through. What a treat!

And now, back to my Open University group project, of which more anon. It’s great to be working with people, but it is a bit time consuming. Onwards!

Dear Readers, I’ve been following Akram Khan for ages – I  love the way that he combines classical Kathak dance with ballet and other dance traditions. Back in 2006 he worked with musician Nitin Sawney, sculptor Anthony Gormley and Belgian choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui in Zero Degrees, which I fell in love with when I saw it at Sadler’s Wells. But Khan’s Giselle, which I saw on Friday, was one of the best dance performances I’ve ever been privileged to witness.

Giselle is a story of betrayed love: in the original, a country girl (Giselle) falls in love with a nobleman (Albrecht) who is disguised as a commoner, but who is already betrothed to an aristocratic woman. When this is revealed, Giselle falls into madness and dies. However, after death she joins the vengeful Wilis, who are the ghosts of women betrayed by men – the Wilis enact their revenge by making the betrayers dance until they die. However, Giselle saves Albrecht, in spite of him being a sad waste of human genetic material.

So far, so normal (for ballet/opera at least), though I did wonder if that phrase ‘he gives me the willies’ actually refers to the Wilis. What is so stunning about this performance is that Khan  has changed the country folk to ‘outcasts’, who work in some kind of unspecified factory, and the aristocrats to ‘landlords’. The Wilis are the ghosts of women killed in the factory. The score is relentless in some parts, driving onwards until you think it can’t get any more discordant, and then dropping away to utter silence. At which point, some poor soul normally has a coughing fit, but there we go. The Wilis are terrifying, and Khan  made the decision that they would be the only characters who go en pointe, which means that their appearance has a ghostly, supernatural quality.

I had no idea that the ballet had been around for such a long time – it first appeared in 2016, has won shedloads of awards, and some of the people in my row at the London Coliseum had been to see it in different locations half a dozen times. I shall certainly be seeking it out whenever it appears – it is involving, thought-provoking, moving and viscerally exciting. What a joy!

Here are a few excerpts…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQQVhk5pNPE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3-v4M1zdHA

I’m off to see a more traditional version of the ballet at the Royal Opera House in a few months. It will be really interesting to compare and contrast.

 

Dear Readers, regular followers here might remember that back in 2024 I reported how ‘frog saunas’ were being used to help frogs in Australia combat the deadly fungal disease chytridiomycosis, which has already wiped out some 90 species of frog. Dr Antony Waddle, the scientist involved,  made the discovery that the fungus that causes the disease cannot survive temperatures higher than 30 degrees Celsius. So, he provided the wild frogs with a simple masonry brick with holes in it, placed inside a little ‘greenhouse’. The frogs who basked in the holes seemed to clear their bodies of chytrid: not only that, but the fungus didn’t come back, even when the frogs moved into cooler areas.

Following on from the sauna treatment, Dr Waddle developed a vaccine against chytrid: he has raised hundreds of the endangered Green and Yellow Bell Frogs (Ranoidea aurea) and vaccinated them ready for release back into the wild. Sadly, the vaccine doesn’t work on all frogs, so Dr Waddle is also looking at synthetic biology to help some of the 400 species of amphibian around the world who are threatened with extinction by the chytrid fungus. This might involve replacing genes that are most affected by the disease, or looking at ‘resistance genes’ which help some frogs to survive when others are dying. It’s a controversial technology but no one is talking about ‘de-extincting’ animals here. At any rate, it’s clear that frogs have a dedicated friend in Dr Waddle, who is fast becoming my new amphibian-rescuing hero. Frog Man, perhaps?

 

A series following the 72 British mini-seasons of Nature’s Calendar by Kiera Chapman, Lulah Ellender, Rowan Jaines and Rebecca Warren. 

Dear Readers, last time I was following Nature’s Calendar my snowdrops weren’t anywhere to be seen, but this year they are coming through very nicely – the temperature has risen a bit, and everything seems to be taking advantage of it. But here’s a thing that I didn’t know – a particular protein expressed by snowdrops, called lectin, is being used by scientists to protect crops from nematodes and aphids, and another chemical, called galantamine, shows a lot of potential in trials of drugs to slow the progress of Alzheimer’s disease. So, not only is this plant a most welcome sign of spring, and a boon to any passing bees, it is also a powerhouse of substances that might be helpful to us. What a blessing it is!

So now, let’s head back to 2024 and see what was going on snowdrop-wise then….

Dear Readers, I have exactly two tiny patches of snowdrops in my garden, and neither is anywhere near flowering yet – the temperatures are below freezing, and look set to stay that way for the rest of the week. And yet, even the sight of those grey-green leaves poking above the frosty soil is enough to gladden the soul. Alfred, Lord Tennyson certainly thought so…

The Snowdrop
by
Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Many, many welcomes,
February fair-maid,
Ever as of old time,
Solitary firstling,
Coming in the cold time,
Prophet of the gay time,
Prophet of the May time,
Prophet of the roses,
Many, many welcomes,
February fair-maid!

Welcome indeed, and do let me know how  the snowdrops are doing if you’re in the UK, I suspect that in some places they will be under about a foot of snow, but hopefully none the worse for that.

In Nature’s Calendar, Rebecca Warren describes how ‘our’ snowdrop (Galanthus nivalis, literally ‘milk flower of the snows’ is one of twenty species (and of course these days there are hundreds, if not thousands, of variants).

Here is Galanthus elwesii, or Greater Snowdrop, from the Caucasus…

This is the Pleated Snowdrop, Galanthus plicatus, from Eastern Europe and Western Asia…

And this is the Green Snowdrop (Galanthus woronowii) from north-eastern Turkey and the Caucasus.

Strangely enough, snowdrops are not native to the UK – they probably came with the Romans (cue the ‘What Have the Romans Ever Done For Us’ scene from Monty Python) but as they’ve been here for over 2000 years I think we can safely view them as a welcome part of our ecosystem. They spread easily (in theory, though as my garden shows, not necessarily in practice), and there were probably drifts of snowdrops in woods across the country when they’re first mentioned by John Gerard in his 1597 herbal.

Snowdrops seem to have a calmness and austerity that I find most soothing at this time of year. They appear pristine whatever the weather, and they just seem to get on with it, resilient and stoic. They always lighten my heart with their promise of spring.

Eros
Louise Glück
I had drawn my chair to the hotel window, to watch the rain.

I was in a kind of dream, or trance —
in love, and yet
I wanted nothing.

It seemed unnecessary to touch you, to see you again.
I wanted only this:
the room, the chair, the sound of the rain falling,
hour after hour, in the warmth of the spring night.

I needed nothing more; I was utterly sated.
My heart had become very small; it took very little to fill it.
I watched the rain falling in heavy sheets over the darkened city —

You were not concerned. I did the things
one does in daylight, I acquitted myself,
but I moved like a sleepwalker.

It was enough and it no longer involved you.
A few days in a strange city.
A conversation, the touch of a hand.
And afterward, I took off my wedding ring.

That was what I wanted: to be naked.

Rain
Carol Ann Duffy
Not so hot as this for a hundred years.
You were where I was going. I was in tears.
I surrendered my heart to the judgement of my peers.

A century’s heat in the garden, fierce as love.
You returned on the day I had to leave.
I mimed the full, rich, busy life I had to live.

Hotter than hell. I burned for you day and night;
got bits of your body wrong, bits of it right,
in the huge mouth of the dark, in the bite of the light.

I planted a rose, burnt orange, the colour of flame,
gave it the last of the water, gave it your name.
It flared back at the sun in a perfect rhyme.

Then the rain came, like stammered kisses at first
on the back of my neck. I unfurled my fist
for the rain to caress with its lips. I turned up my face,

and water flooded my mouth, baptised my head,
and the rainclouds gathered like midnight overhead,
and the rain came down like a lover comes to a bed.

Dear Readers, I had rather forgotten about my trail camera: when I downloaded the photos there were about 1400 shots, which is about six weeks’ worth. So I thought I’d give you a flavour of an average East Finchley evening. Eat your heart out, David Attenborough.

At 8.35 an example of Homo sapiens heads out to the shed to retrieve a frozen pint of milk, and to check on how the washing is drying (our dryer is in the shed. Go figure).

Finally at 10.21 Homo sapiens decides to bring the washing in and hang it up instead. Our dryer doesn’t like it when it’s cold, and as you can see it’s a chilly 27 degrees Fahrenheit (nearly -3 degrees Celsius)

At a quarter to 11 a fluffy cat wanders past to check on the handful of food we’ve left out for the fox. I suspect this is Cosmo, who lives on the next road but who has adopted half a dozen households in our road. He often stands on the pavement yowling and demanding some attention. Apparently his owner has four other cats, so maybe he feels he needs a little one-on-one time.

At 2 a.m. the first fox turns up. What a fine looking lad! Nothing mangey about this one.

And very thorough he is too!

I am a little puzzled about what’s happened to the time here, but not about the cat – he clearly came along after the fox, and has a wound on his right leg. He’s been around for a while, and the wound is clearing up so I think he’s had treatment. He’s a right old tom cat though – have a look at this enormous head, in a photo from the Whatsapp on the road. Unneutered toms often have  such miserable lives, getting into fights and making themselves generally unpopular.

No problems with this handsome fluffy cat doing the rounds at 4.25, though – looks like Cosmo making a return trip, though the family a few doors up also have a magnificent fluffy cat, so maybe it’s that cat. Whoever it is, it’s no wonder that there’s not usually any food left in the morning…

 

Dear Readers, the author and botanist James Wong always has something interesting to say in about plants and gardening, and this time his article in New Scientist is about how to stop your seedlings getting long and leggy.

There are pluses and minuses about starting your plants off indoors. They’re protected from the wind and the rain, the cold and any pesky pests that might be lurking over winter. Alas, this lack of ‘challenge’ can also lead to them growing tall and fragile. Who amongst us has not planted out our seedlings only to see them all keel over at the first available opportunity! What they are lacking is a bit of buffeting.

Wong points out that plants respond to wind and other ‘mechanical perturbation’ by growing thicker stems and a stockier ‘body’ overall. This phenomenon is known as (takes deep breath) thigmomorphogenesis. Furthermore, plants subjected to touch seem to have more resilience to pests and drought as well.

Experiments with plants as varied as petunias and tomatoes, involving  fans, feathers or even a sheet of paper brushed across the leaves have all shown a reduction in stem elongation of 20 to 40 percent.

Wong suggests that just 10 seconds per day of ‘plant stroking’ is enough to trigger the effect. So, while many of us talk to our plants (and in my case often plead with them to do better) maybe we need to get hands on?