Monday 12 April

This week has been at something of sixes and sevens. The other dr A has been on nights which means that the hounds have achieved their life's desire of spending the whole day, as well as the whole night, in bed. Luckily, it has been nothing but a pleasure to be out of doors this week. Although chilly in the shade, the energy of the sun has been felt on the ground and in my soul. 

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​Tuesday 13 April

Amongst the pheasants on the walk, we see wild ducks on the stream. The girls see them too but are far too slow to scramble down the ravine to the water and the birds have taken flight noisily. The girls look identical but they are polar opposites in character. They even swim differently, although it isn't really swimming, the water is barely knee deep. Morag gets into the water and then sinks in a dignified manner so that her tummy and tail are submerged, for all the world like a hippopotamus, or a submarine in shallow water. Maud is all noise and bluster, she lives for excitement and she kicks up the water with her feet like toddler with new wellingtons, and drinks the droplets that she can catch. I think about complaining about the wet dogs, and then I remember February when they had to be washed with a hosepipe and dried in the cold, and I don't. 

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​Thursday 15 April

I thought I was original. A one off. There is a sort of humble-bragging pride in being considered unique. Turns out there is another flower lover not a million miles from here. Her name is Grace. She has a pair of matching dogs, an old property, a cutting garden, a liking for roses and soft coloured foxgloves and I feel I may not be so unique after all. Grace from Bramble and Wild has been an inspiration for a while and she is my latest stockist. I celebrate the loosening of lockdown with a haircut and coffee with Grace in her garden.

Friday 16 April

I teeter on the brink. I hang on. I check the weather app almost hourly. We have had the false spring so many times, but surely surely, surely, this is the real thing coming. There is a forecast for -3 tonight, and then tomorrow -3, and then a steady climb above the frost point. Daytime figures of 15 or 16. Night time lows of two or three. Chilly, but safe enough. I count the days until I can throw open the doors of the greenhouse and let loose the seed trays into the fresh, fresh air. 

Until then, I wear socks in bed.

​Saturday 17 April

I am a die-hard fan of no-dig. There is nothing you could say that would persuade me that Charles Dowding isn't a genius and a leading light of our time. No one ever mentions what happens if there is a lapse though. The matrix planting beds, dots and dabs of perennials, inter-planted with grasses and towers of bronze fennel, are now all under-planted with a carpet of nettles, oxalis and a weed that I cannot identify but it is a nightmare to get out. Not because it is particularly tenacious, it really isn't, but because it comes up with clods of my precious precious soil. I tan the back of my neck by spending the day addressing this, and restoring swathes of beds to readiness. A hot day for April. Morag sleeps in the shade of the Taihaku cherry tree. Hugo, incomprehensibly given that his coat is a shaggy mess and thick as a fireside rug, sleeps on an empty compost sack in the greenhouse. Maud digs huge holes to find imaginary voles. By the evening they are absolutely exhausted. A week of indulgent bed sleeping has not prepared them for such vigorous outdoor activity. 

First proper harvest of asparagus.

​Sunday 18 April

There is dew on the ground this morning, but no frost. I start to harden off the vegetables. The sweet peas have been out for a while, a bit of cold never hurt them. A big day for the compost heaps. All the weeding has produced a lot of greens and they need stirring with cardboard and chippings. I would love not to mow the orchard so that the wild flowers could thrive, but it is a very grass dominated area and mower clipping accelerate composting better than anything else in the world. Hugo loves grass clippings too, and he rolls on the warm pile. Maud climbs in and out of the compost bay because she loves novelty and naughtiness and she thinks it's funny. Morag sleeps in the shade of the Taihaku cherry tree.

I hope the sun has shone for you, wherever you are.

Much love,

G x