St Dominic, Tamar Valley: Muddy ways, once trodden by donkeys carrying corn to the mill, are littered with spent catkins and lichened branches
Pheasants scuttle from the windswept field to shelter among undergrowth with sprawling flowers of Helio, Fortune, Carlton and Victoria daffodils. In this derelict market garden, on a steep slope above the defunct leats and millponds in the Radland Valley, a succession of narcissi appears in spring. Each variety was planted in a separate plot and the original rows are still discernible among the encroaching hart’s-tongue fern, dog’s mercury, bramble, thorn, overarching clumps of hazel and leaning tree-trunks covered in mosses and polypody ferns.
Within this tangled habitat, as golden catkins faded to brown, cherry plum blossom (smothering twigs and branches sprouted from the rootstock of long-fallen plum trees) showed as drifts of white smoke. On tall laurels, grown out of former trimmed hedges and shelter belts, flower spikes, scented like marzipan, also bloomed thickly in the unseasonal warmth. Gales and heavy rain have since tarnished the blossoms, but there may be a set of cherry-like fruits for the birds; laurel fruits will germinate and develop into thickets like those overhanging the stream and enveloping the ruins of the nearby miller’s house. Roe deer occasionally wander through this neglected land, benefiting from its jumble of different and absent owners who were tempted more than 40 years ago to buy little leisure plots (sold cheap, mostly unseen and with no access). Hopefully, the song of chiffchaff and blackcap will soon reverberate from the most dense and inaccessible cover, secure from walkers’ unleashed dogs.
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