Sparrowhawk swoops for dinner

WALKING the West Cork roads on the weekend before last, we enjoyed the first blackberries of 2013, sun-warmed and shining on the hedges.

Some were sweet, some still bitter. Around them were hundreds of companions, ripening in the sun; they will be ripe by now. The weather reminded us of long-ago summers, footprints-in-the-tar weather — and even better, there was a small breeze, a freshener as there might be on a pet day in May.

The hedgerows now deliver a feast for the sweet tooth, for the eye and, one might say, for the soul. In West Cork and elsewhere, roadsides are on fire with montbretia, that orange alien now established on our verges and, for most of us, a delight. Fuchsia, another garden escapee, flowers in corridors along country lanes.