Edging towards the end of January, quiet gardening now. Time for bird feeders and fire. We spent Christmas at the beach hut. My mother-in-law is nearing 94, our weeks ever more precious together.
There are piles of prunings from late autumn, left to dry in the wet. I turn it all over carefully before burning for fear of disturbing a home. Calendula is budding by the sheltered wall. I bring some inside to flower. Temperatures lurk around 6C, sea mist, sullen cloud, low treetop sun.
We fill the bird feeders with sunflower seeds, scatter more on the ground. The blue tits are alive to it first. but within a day they are overrun. Clouds of sparrows and finches in almost every shade, all bossed on the ground by blackbirds. They are joined by a red squirrel, fat tail edged with orange.
Our neighbours gave us an oil barrel, maybe the best-ever gardening gift. Open lidded, holed at the base, like the one my mother burned my patched Levi’s in long ago. There’s a thing about fire, the anxious moment when you wonder whether damp branches will take. The key, of course, is to build slowly with small sticks, something I am mostly too impatient to do.
Henri rakes acorns and leaves, I stand in shrunken despair. Suddenly, flames shoot through the top. We add broken-down branches, prune the rugosa, the sun comes out, the lazy smoke lifts. For the next few hours we are in gardening heaven, burning, trimming, tidying.
We stack the wet leaves, worry about the early crocus coming through (I lightly cover them with trimmings from the Christmas tree). I top up the feeders and scatter more kilos of seed. We startle a deer at the door and say goodbye to the land as we drive away. The bramble can wait until we’re back for Ina’s birthday in February.
Allan Jenkins’s Plot 29 (4th Estate, £9.99) is out now. Order it for £8.49 from guardianbookshop.com
