Rites of spring

Horton Lane clockwise yesterday, the first time for a few days, to be rewarded by getting up close and personal with a small white egret on Longmead Road. It was just hopping out of the stream and I wondered whether it was the same one spotted on 28th November last: do such birds migrate? Do they return to the same spot each year? Is the Longmead its winter home and it is about to fly off to the far north?

Back home to notice activity in the top of the ash tree over the hedge at the back of our garden. An ash tree with a large nest at the very top, a large nest in which I have seen magpies in weeks past. But on this occasion crow one was sitting in the nest and crow two was systematically chasing a magpie out of the tree. The magpie was not keen to go and was only retreating a branch at a time, but crow two was determined and eventually the magpie chucked in the towel. We now await baby crows.

After that it was clearly my turn and I decided to do something about the water lily in the small pond under the small oak tree, the lily the leaves of which are growing too big. Furthermore, the whole plant has become bouyant and it, together with its roots and pot have floated to the surface. Only just bouyant but that is enough - but why? Is the rhizome bouyant and as it grows it eventually overcomes the weight of the rest of the plant and its pot? Whatever the reason, entirely unsatisfactory; one does not get a pretty water lily from a floating rhizome. One gets a right mess.

Heaved the thing out of the pond, dripping with all kinds of gunk (just as well it was cool and so not as stinky as it might otherwise have been) to find that the plant and its roots had completely smothered the holey (by design) plastic pot, so putting a few stones into the top of the pot to weigh it down was not an option. Decided that the way forward was one of the blocks of fake stonework which used to edge a neighbouring flower bed. Blocks made out of some hard yellow, cement based stuff, tricked out on one face to look like stone work. Found one which was maybe 15 inches by 5 inches by 2 inches. Found some 2mm gauge new-to-me mild steel wire (from Exminster) and used it to tie the plant to the block, more or less the right way up, and dropped the whole back into the pond, now very murky. It sank, as intended, and after a while a newt popped up, presumably disturbed from its winter slumbers in the slime. Hopefully he or she will survive. Hopefully I have not damaged the crown of the rhizome too much and it is still pointing vaguely up. Hopefully also the crown is in the middle of the pond so that the leaves to come will float in the middle of the pond. The plant is not which means that we are in with a chance.

We shall see. In the meantime I wonder how nature handles this problem in the wild. What stops the rhizome of a wild lily floating to the surface? It is not as if the roots curl around things, they are fleshy and straight. Perhaps it is just a matter of luck. Some rhizomes stay down, lodged under a dead root or a stone, and prosper. Others float, drift away and get lost somewhere in the shallows where they are overcome by reeds.