THIRTY THINGS IN THIRTY DAYS

It’s an education relocating from the city to the country; from ten years Skid Row adjacent to a tiny town in Somerset; kind of like being Lisa Douglas from Green Acres, without the hair, the accent, and the millions. 

 

My preconceptions of life in rural England come from a schizophrenic blend of Downton Abbey, Straw Dogs, Cold Comfort Farm, Withnail and I, The League of Gentlemen and all things Jane Austen.   This month in the country has been an education.  Every day I learn something new. 

Here are thirty things I’ve learned in thirty days.

Peafowl sleep in trees. (Penny in her tree at dawn)

Farmers post signs advising people walking the pathways through their property to keep dogs on leash.

Neospora is a parasite found in dog feces that can cause pregnant cows to abort.

When a neighbor you've never met puts a notice on your door listing pertinent local information, and that note contains your actual names handwritten on it, your neighbors are not stalkers they are merely kind.

Church bells are loud.

Our local spiritual center offers a Dolphin Rebirthing workshop, where you can be ‘rebirthed’ under water while listening to recordings of dolphin cries.

Daffodils grow in the ground, not in clear plastic packaging.

Jackdaws in your chimney make lots of noise.

March/April is lambing season and they are ridiculously cute.  These are our neighbors.

Electric fences keep sheep in their fields.

If you walk ten miles to an organic farm market, you will be too tired to eat what you’ve bought. 

Badgers are bigger than you’d think.

If you put a sofa out back of your property in the fall, the badgers will dismantle it and carry it away, including the carcass, by the following spring. 

You can hike to the top of Lollover Hill at Easter to see the three crosses placed there by the congregation of the local church. 

Cell reception is iffy.

Sometimes people in jeeps with giant flashlights come in the middle of the night to search for things on the moor beside your house.

There are many more earthworms than your garden variety brown type.

The Large Blue Butterfly was brought back from near extinction and thrives on Combe Hill. 

Sheep poo looks like small black licorice drops.

Sometimes farmers play little games with hikers, pointing public access signs in the wrong direction.

When you are traipsing through a mud covered field, and ask a farmer the way, and he directs you down an even muddier field, chances are he is not laughing 
with you.

There’s a novelist in the area whose excellent books I have been devouring.

Creative envy occurs even in the country.

Somerset cider is delicious.

There are fireplaces in pubs and grand houses the same size as a studio flat in New York.

You can buy great books at a charity shop.

There is a butcher who can’t tolerate the thought of actually killing an animal.

You can make chutney out of practically anything.

‘Scarecrow’ birds are used on thatched roofs to keep real birds off.

Billowing smoke behind your house does not mean the Santa Anas are blowing and you’re going up in flames.  It means that your neighbor at the vicarage has brush to get rid of, as he kindly explains to you when you run panic stricken from your house.

Many lessons....