Down the lane in Spring

Oh come for walk with us? Go on, come! Let’s fill our lungs with blue…

Newly dressed in the crystal of the rain the landscape recalls the earlier spring; the flowers of white wood sorrel, the pink and white anemone and cuckoo flower, the thick clustered, long stalked primroses and darker cowslips with their scentless sweetness pure as an infants breath; the solitary wild cherry trees flowering among still leafless beech; the blackbirds of twighlight and the flower faced owls;the pewits wheeling after dusk; the jonquil and daffodil and arabis and leopard’s bane of cottage gardens; the white clouds plunged in blue floating over the brown woods of the hills; the delicate thrushes with speckled breasts paler than their backs, motionless on dewy turf; and all the joys of life that come through the nostrils…

The South Country - Edward Thomas-

The weather has been so glorious, everything is luminous and so achingly beautiful this year, lockdown year… Every morning, as I walk down the lane the birdsong is exultant, no cars to drown their singing. I imagine myself like all those writers who capture the seasons so perfectly with their prose trying to compose the picture in words, but I can’t and Edward Thomas and Laurie Lee and Thomas Hardy and so many others have left such a rich seam for my to mine my thoughts quickly turn to reading.

Meanwhile the bluebells chime their April splendour.

Inspired by the wonderful Tattie Rose flowers I gather my grasses and flowers, the bluebells have crept into the garden and I fumble my way to a hedgerow arrangement. It felt so good to be using humble native ingredients…