Many Weathers
This week: a lamb lost in the snow, an artistic eye on the landscape and the sounds of spring
The Shepherd’s Calendar
March month of ‘many weathers’ wildly comes
In hail and snow and rain and threatening hums
And floods: while often at his cottage door
The shepherd stands to hear the distant roar
John Clare’s poem The Shepherd’s Calendar (1827) paints a lyrical portrait of March’s ‘many weathers’, experienced here this past week.
Clare, who wrote his poems hiding in hedges in and around the village of Helpston, a 5-hour walk from here, knew that alongside the promise of spring, March threatened snow and flooding.
And so it was on Wednesday night, when the wind turned and a bitter north-easterly hurried in heavy clouds, that the weather wafted a freshly-aired eiderdown of snow across the landscape.
By Thursday lunchtime, when I walked out with the dog, it was a whiteout – only the dark outline of trees, lanes and hedges visible in the sideways snow. In the midst of the blizzard, two hares sat facing each other in a field.
But by late afternoon, when the school bus returned through the slush, the thaw had set in and Morcott Brook was gushing with meltwater.
We went sledging in the steeply sloping pasture that descends to the stream. Then, from under the roots of a battered ash, the bleating of a lamb. Perfectly curled into a hidey-hole on the south side of the tree, sheltered from the north wind, it ventured out to greet us.
It had been left behind earlier in the day when all ewes and lambs had been moved into a nearby paddock.
A couple of quick phone calls and the shepherdess came to retrieve the lamb. A Blue Texel, she told me – four days old. With a bellyful of milk, it had probably fallen asleep under the tree, undetected.
Now, safely reunited with its mother.
• To see a video of the lamb and photos of the landscape in snow, visit, like and follow @rutland_country_life on Instagram
Artist’s Eye
In the warmth of the kitchen, on the pine table next to the range, Tina is painting.
Watered acrylics and pencil lines form rapidly to capture the snow-covered scenes and landscapes we have been immersed in. Tina says:
“The palette is subtle, almost monotone, with limited colour.
“There’s this gorgeous softness, but then you have the striking bare bones of trees and hedgerows dissecting the landscape. Keeping the palette simple highlights that structure.
“It’s also very dramatic. The sky is slate grey and it’s a contrast to the inky whiteness.”
Next to the snow scenes, a picture of moonlight.
The night before the snow came, we looked up to a full moon in a clear, cold sky. Rising above cottage chimneys and wood smoke, the silver light glistens on slate roofs. A sense of magic – to the sound of bleating lambs.
Lying in the Grass
Just a week ago, on Sunday, I was lying in the grass listening to birdsong – great tit, chaffinch and robin – and the gentle backing track of water coursing downstream from Bisbrooke.
The ground and grass were dry, like a meadow in late October warmth. February had yielded only 10 per cent of its average rain fall. Farmers were concerned, early morning radio had said.
Now, at the turn of meteorological spring, winter was forecast to return, likely turning this stream into a torrent, generating the distant roar that Clare’s shepherd might have heard from his – or her – cottage door.
I closed my eyes and listened.