Football rattles, apricots, Mackenzie Crook and gooseberry and elderflower shrub
Abundance: Tuesday 11 June 2024
The magpies have brought their football rattles1, and rather than one for sorrow or three-for-a-girl, they now more commonly line up in two-for-joy or four-for-a-boy gaggles.
They’re high in the neighbour’s dead tree, or on a telegraph pole; anywhere they can look down on the hedges. They’re here for the baby sparrows, the young blackbirds and other small birds. And I don’t like it.
I’m in the garden checking on the four fruit hanging on the dwarf apricot. It might not sound like much, but they are the first that the pollinators have worked their magic to create. I’m not naive enough to imagine the fruit will cling for the summer -the tree’s young years will find them too much of a burden even for so few - but it means next year carries a racing chance that midsummer will bring apricots.
I grew apricots back at the farm. While they lack the lush succulence of a peach that leaves the tree without persuasion, a fresh apricot - plucked after a day of sunshine on its back - has a rich buttery intensity that lifts the soul. So, even in this small garden, I can’t not find space for a single, self fertile, dwarf apricot tree. These few fruit mean it is slowly putting down roots, fuelled by the occasional liquid feed and a great deal of hope.
This morning is one of small jobs, easily overlooked. As well as dreaming of apricots to come, I’m cutting back the chives (their flowers are going over, the leaves becoming coarse), twisting off sweet cicely seeds before they darken and become tough, sieving and simmering the mugolio that’s been quietly fermenting this last month, and whatever else guilts me into being done.
All the time, that rattle fills the high air.
Sitting with a coffee, still for a few moments, I remember reading that magpies mate for life. Hence, I guess, ‘one for sorrow, two for joy’. Maybe that explains why they’re here most often in even numbers at the moment - joy, boy, gold - one of each couple searches for food for them both, while the other keeps Dixie.
Below, more words and three recipes including Gooseberry and elderflower shrub and a cocktail sing it