Janet Heeran

Bealtaine, May Day, is behind us and has gifted us summer.

Maith Éireann promises us 20 degrees in the next few days.

Some neighbours have cut and baled silage, but we're holding out for the 20 degrees.

Hedges of white blossom circle like belts the bright green bellies of the fields.

Ditches along the road to Buing and Dunamore are festooned white with cow parsley, ash tree blooms and especially white thorn flowers.

Our house is surrounded by these native trees and from the kitchen window I see and hear blackbirds, finches and thrushes as they dart in and out of the protective thorny habitat.

Shrews and mice sometimes break cover from under the white thorn, much to the cat's amusement.

Sgeach gial or bright thorn bush in Irish.

The tree is native to Ireland.

Place names such as Lansky in Dublin or the Skehard Road in Cork.

Family names like Sgeachan and Thornhill are from the same origin.

Furthermore in Irish it's not a frog you have in your throat but a thorn bush.

Also called hawthorn the species makes up about three quarters of Irish hedgerows.

Some of the trees grow tall and some are laid as hedges.

Long before electric fences and pigtail posts, our ancestors created stock-proof field boundaries from white thorn.

You should cut the stem most of the way through and lay it at 45 degrees, taking care to allow for light to penetrate and making sure to knit the stem into the overall hedge, which is an excellent fence, a wildlife corridor and a secure nesting place for birds.

However, the late white thorn hedge does not produce a crop of flowers.

It's the tree that gives us the huge diva blossom performance.

Bees are delighted to see the white thorn, which they depend on as an early food source.

A wet spring, such as the one we've just experienced, causes the trees to produce lots of nectar to encourage the bees to pollinate the trees.