First swallows of the year

They arrived on the fourteenth. We always notice the date — it feels like a starting gun for the rest of the season.

By the weekend there were six of them working the meadow in the evening light, low over the grass and then suddenly up past the barn roof and gone. The dogs barely looked up.

The river is still running cold but the shingle bank has reappeared after the April floods. We walked down on Sunday and found it completely undisturbed — not a footprint, not a wrapper. Just stones and water
and a heron who had clearly been there much longer than we had.

The blossom is almost over now. A few stragglers on the old cherry by the wall. By next week it will all be green.