Spring at the summerhouse. The meadow is alive with primroses. Runs of soft-coloured flowers, nestling in corners, carpeted under trees. Many more than ever before.
Sharp celandines, too, a brighter, braver yellow. Scattered through the banks, dotted through the grass. Nodding violets in white, and deep purple, shelter in the hedges, spray out under low-hanging branches. A perfect perfume.
The cowslips are coming, standing tall in the banks at the back, starting to shoot through the grass. It’s all very Oberon, Midsummer Night’s Dream. The October-sown local wildflower mix has taken in the bank along the side of the house. The poppies are furthest ahead. The “blue bed” too is thrusting through in the post-Easter sunshine.
I have a 60g packet of Higgledy Garden’s Bee Friendly assortment, loaded with phacelia and borage, to go in the corner where I have been winter-storing soil from mole hills. Barrow load after barrow load, weeded, watered now and raked. I add more phacelia saved from last summer and a native blue lupin, a gift from a nextdoor neighbour, which I also scatter at the entrance. Later I’ll top up with extra calendula. I lack seed restraint.
The house is decked with vases of forsythia from the huge bush by the front door. Extravagant sprays in egg-yolk glory. The daffodils, this year replacing tulips too attractive to passing deer, are in full bloom. Soon to be joined by pheasant’s-eye narcissi, known here as Whitsun lily.
The too-tall larch have fluffy baby shoots, maybe my favourite fresh growth. Elsewhere we plait side branches from where Bo the woodsman has cut back the dividing “hedge”. I mourn the lost tree height but we need to be good neighbours and the wood has been split and sits waiting on next winter.
It’s not all work, of course; we take time to sit, to stand and stare.
Allan Jenkins’s Plot 29 (4th Estate, £9.99) is out now. Order it for £8.49 from guardianbookshop.com
