April dawns

There is so much time, and yet it rushes past. Each day seems full of possibility and potential, of a strange restricted form of liberty, the freedom of staying at home. There is an unfamiliar stillness in the roads and the skies, and yet the hedgerows are different every day. The first hawthorn buds have opened. There are bluebells, cuckoo flowers in the grass, lambs in each field. Cow parsley threatens to engulf the lanes. The air is so quiet I hear the peacocks from the next village. 

The heat has taken its toll on the tulips. I feed and water, but the freshness and the bloom has started to fade. The cut ones in the house go over and shed dark, twisted petals on the floor, despite the cool of the thick cob walls. 

In the tank outside, the single early tulips in the courtyard take on the beauty of age; the streaks and variations in colour become more pronounced and more beautiful.

In the kitchen garden, the beds are starting to fill up. There is a drop in temperature forecast at the beginning of next week and I try to hold off, but the greenhouse is bursting at the seams. Broad beans, successionally sown to stagger the crop, sit in rows alongside Kelvedon Wonder peas. The asparagus grows inches every day. Butterhead lettuce mixed with the smaller leaves of the rainbow chard fill bowls of salad.

As our world shrinks, the little things get bigger. Food. The other Dr A bakes bread. A village delivery from Tracebridge sourdough which brings the best hot cross buns. Nettle and nutmeg pizza. Goats cheese. Wild garlic. Spelt flatbreads cooked over flames. I run errands for neighbours and receive honey from the village bees in return. There are bantam eggs on next door’s log pile. A pound for six, posted through the letterbox. 

I worry about the amount of milk we have left. I can improvise almost everything, but I cannot live without coffee.

The Kitchen Garden is feeling more and more important at the moment. The hazel tunnel in the flower field has been planted up with sweet peas, but there are runner beans and french cobra beans alternating in between. The Carouby de Maussane mangetouts will join them as soon as they are tall enough. A spare bed at the back of the field with odd peonies and some rogue raspberries might be carrots, or kale, or even strawberries. It is in the truest cottage garden tradition that flowers and food intermingle, and every spare inch is used up. 

Now that the tulips are over, I plant to fill the courtyard pots and planters with herbs. Chives already fill one trough, and the other sits ready for red kale salad leaves. Have you seen the new Great Dixter book about growing fruit and vegetables in pots? It is just lovely. Huge thank you for Sarah Statham for the recommendation. 

The photographs below are by Andrew Montgomery and it is published by Phaidon.