When I set out for Shetland a month ago, I was expecting it to be a) windy, b) dark and c) still winter. I was right about a), as mentioned in previous posts. I was wrong about b) and c). It wasn’t any darker than at home, and now the clocks have gone forward it is of course light until well after 8 o’clock. When I arrived here, there were a few daffodils in flower, but most were at the same stage as those in my own garden: small yellow buds pointing vertically upwards. Now, however, there are definite signs of Spring, and daffodils appearing in every corner. A blackbird started singing at the lighthouse two days ago, the razorbills and kittiwakes are arriving and there are skylarks singing everywhere.
As far as I can tell, gardening is not a very popular leisure activity in Shetland. The islands are really too windswept for anything but the hardiest (and shortest) plants to survive. The predominant terrain is treeless moorland. New houses – and there are an awful lot of them – have a sort of “plonked down on the plot” look, surrounded by grass or even chippings. Presumably it takes a very long time for plants to get established at 60 degrees North. There are a few polytunnels: not your effete flappy polythene type, but solid sheets of curved plastic, battened down solidly onto proper foundations. The older houses are surrounded by low stone walls, behind which lurk clumps of very hardy perennials, showing a little green but no flowers yet. The old crofters had the delightfully named plantigrubs – stone walled enclosures for growing crops which would not survive out on the hillsides. Even today, the soil inside is rich and black and at least a foot higher than the surrounding land.
The hillsides are still brownish: pale Naples yellow, or buff titanium, where last year’s dead grass still stands; dark reddish brown (caput mortuum?) where the heather grows. It must be spectacular when it’s in flower, but now it is completely dormant. However, the fields around Sumburgh farm are definitely greening up, as is the grass by the airport runways. Here and there, the wild flowers are coming out, and when I walk along the cliff path I can see tiny shoots of green grass pushing through the dead stems. A bumblebee buzzed out of the daffodils immediately after I pressed the shutter of the camera.
