sleepy setters and a spring in my step
Monday 14 March
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I keep noticing that I need to clean my windows. That can mean only one thing, the light has shifted. I feel the warmth on my skin, and the tingle in the air. All the daffodils are out in the orchard. This is not a positive thing; I ordered sacks and sacks of the best double bulbs five years ago and yet every single flower is now a standard, single, custard yellow. I do not like normal daffodils so this flowering does not bring me joy. Morag has taken to sleeping on them, and I do not stop her.
Tuesday 15 March
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What does bring me joy is cutting hellebores on a gloriously Hardy-esque, misty morning. The sun just burns through by mid-morning. I boil the kettle, sear the hellebore stems, and drink tea in the courtyard for the first time this year. A bird has a noisy bath in a shallow trough of rainwater next to me. For someone who spends a lot of time outside, my bird knowledge is shamefully patchy and I cannot identify the rather drab looking brown bird. The RSPB suggests it might be, confusingly, a juvenile blackbird. I thought that even I could identify a blackbird, but apparently not.
[Photo by Matt Austin.]
Wednesday 16 March
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Talking of birds, one swallow does not a summer make. As if to make a mockery of yesterday's sunshine and the spring in my step, it pours with rain all day. My thatch is in dire need of replacing at the moment and my thatcher has broken his foot, so I go around the house putting pots under the drips.
Thursday 17 March
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And, as if it had never been gone, the sun is back. I think I may have been a willow weaver in a former life. I spend the day building structures and fences around the vegetable beds in the middle of the flower field. I cannot express how much joy I got from it; I was almost tempted to pull it all down when I had finished, just so I could do it all again.
Friday 18 March
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My heart rejoiced in the act of building fences. My hands did not. I spend the day at work, applying layers of hand cream each and every hour. By the end of April, my hands will have toughened up, but they are showing signs of their labour today. When I get home, the sun is still warm. A long dog walk, and the full moon rises over the hill into a gloriously clear night sky as we eat supper.
Saturday 19 March
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No seed sowing this weekend. The conditions are unfavourable immediately after a full moon. This doesn’t mean I don’t check the greenhouse multiple times a day though. I am obsessed. An added delight, the first tulips are in full flower. Please remind me this autumn to not buy pink tulips. I always swear in spring I won’t and then by autumn, I have forgotten again. Their gawdy, sugary pinkness is vastly improved by the fact that they are full of bees.
Sunday 20 March
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Have you seen the weather forecast? Suns for as far as I can see. This is perfect for hoeing. There are some areas where I was too late for sowing ground cover and green manure and they are now thick with hairy bittercress, much of it in flower. It is not difficult to dig out, but it is boringly tedious. Hoeing it is blissful. Hoeing anything is blissful. Within a day or so, the heat will mean that all the hoed off weeds will shrivel up, although I do rake up most of them and layer them in the first compost heap of the year. (Don’t email me and tell me to eat it. I am not going to eat anything that has both ‘bitter’ and hairy’ in its name.)
Along with the first grass clippings and chipped wood from the demolition of the old arches and structures, this first heap is going to be wonderful. In fact, it might even be compost cakes to grow my squash in, like Alison does at Damson Farm.
To answer a few questions I have had this week, yes I am putting my sweet peas out even though there was a light frost this morning but no, no direct sowing anything yet.
[Photo by Matt Austin.]
