Blackthorn blossom without a blackthorn winter?

 The first blackthorn aka sloe Prunus spinosa flowers opened in a hedge alongside one of my favourite walks in Weardale last week. This often signals the start of a 'blackthorn winter', a period of intensely cold north-easterly winds, but this year it looks like we might be lucky - the forecast for the next couple of weeks is for milder weather, warm enough for pollinators to be active. Last spring's blackthorn winter led to pollination failure and a very poor crop of sloes locally, and almost complete crop failure for the damson tree in my garden.

The blackthorn in this length of hedgerow is brutally cut back every winter but this is a tree that produces clusters of flower buds on the old wood that survives, that's almost completely coated in lichens. Blackthorn blossom in a carpet of grey and yellow encrusting lichens is a particularly attractive combination.

Wood mouse opportunist

I've finally taken the bird feeders down in the garden, because there's plenty of natural food available now that spring has arrived. That means that this wood mouse, that hid amongst the flower pots near the back door and raced out to pick up the seeds that the birds scattered, will also need to look elsewhere for a free meal.

There are always wood mice in the garden, usually living in the log piles, but they do occasionally find their way indoors. We've caught five in humane traps since Christmas and released them into a hedgerow about a mile away, hoping that they won't find their way back indoors. I wrote about them in the Guardian Country Diary last week.