A patchwork of flowers

As 'mini' gave way to 'maxi' and the 'summer of love' became a free-for-all; as the 60's became the 70's - the Laura Ashley idyll was born. 'The decade that taste forgot' was yet to happen and fashion, while taking brave futuristic strides, was also in reflective mood. Thus it was that country whimsy - the dainty prints of yesteryear - came to the high street to jostle with the more cutting-edged 'Chelsea Girl' - although I don't think the term 'cutting-edged' had been invented yet.

The fey fair shepherdess look had a certain appeal - usually to the wrong shaped person - and vast smock clad maidens were to be seen billowing in town centres and on university campuses alike (I'm not sure we ever used the term 'campus' then either). They dreamed no doubt of drifting through hay meadows strewn with wild flowers, walking hand in hand with some handsome swain whilst tending a snowy lamb. The Fairport Convention was heard in our land. How we rocked to the sound of folk....For some this was a reality but for the rest of us - well we could at least dress the dream.

This early and magnificent spring with its abundance of sweet wild flowers reminds me of those innocent days before punk gave us all a timely kick up the butt. On roadside and in hedge bottom myriad sprigs and sprays of yellow and blue and white and pink are pushing their way up through the growing greens of leaf and grass towards the light.

I pass by, photograph their transient beauty and stitch my own flowery patchwork.

Asparagus

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower.........

The asparagus bed that Alan planted last spring, and which we have nurtured through its first season, is showing signs of life. I noticed the first spears pushing through the soil a couple of days ago - drawn irresistibly from the soil's moist, dark depths by the warm spring sunshine. Unfortunately they won't be making their way to our plates this year.

Asparagus is a crop which requires patience. The crowns need time to build their strength before the succulent spears can be cut in any quantity. It will be another year before we can gather a harvest and enjoy them dripping with melted butter and scattered with shavings of Parmesan or dipped into creamy hollandaise sauce. So many recipes and such a short season.

Worth waiting for? Definitely.

Easter Saturday

Easter - and the bit of one's brain that isn't focused on chocolate turns to thoughts of gardening.*

Garden centre owners rub their hands with glee as the punters flock in. They make plans for Caribbean cruises, second homes on the Costas, ski lodges in glitzy resorts and the sort of yacht that never leaves harbour but displaces its own volume in gin. At this time of year the business is the 'proverbial license to print money'. The off-season enticements which bear little resemblance to the world of gardening - Santa's Grotto to name but one - are distant memories - replaced by perky 'spring bedding' and most things yellow - the colour de nos jours.

On the home front, there's a vague nagging to be out there moving soil about, digging, and a niggling thought that things could look, well, more springlike. So this afternoon, along with the members of the public that weren't a throng in Welshpool High Street munching pies and eating ice cream I went to our (best ever) local garden centre.

The Derwen Garden Centre, on the Guilsfield road out of Welshpool is a pleasure to visit. The ratio of gimcrackery to plants is wonderfully low. If you want to buy a scented candle or an organic pork pie, they're for sale - but plants are the thing. Here be plants. And here be people who know about plants. (And what a terrific range of plants there is, such variety - and if the Derwen doesn't have what you want there's always their nursery The Dingle a couple of miles up the road.)

My shopping list today was fairly modest - some bog plants, some perennials and a couple of shrubs. The garden we carved out of a concrete yard and a field 2 years ago is taking shape, the sticks and twigs and budding things we put in then have bulked up well. Keep sight of the fact that things are programmed to grow and given soil, light and water, they'll do just that.

Tomorrow's job will be finding homes for my purchases and tucking their roots into some good moist soil - along with the instruction 'Grow damn you, you know you want to!'

I photographed these flowers on the way down to the village yesterday - not a commercial stem amongst them. How lovely they are.

*Apologies to those for whom chocolate and spring bedding are not at the top of the list and for whom Easter is very significant religious festival.

Ain't no stopping it now....

Right at this very moment there's a curlew up on the hill beyond us - making that whooping whirring cry that is the sound of this landscape in early spring. A weak sun has broken through the clouds and infused the milky haze that bathes Long Mountain with a pearly light. There's a bit of a thin wind to take the edge off things but lambs are lying in the sunshine nonetheless - just chillin'. Trees which days ago seemed dark and skeletal now have a dense aurora as leaf and flower bud swell. And birds; twittering and flitting everywhere. The creeping beast that is the season's irresistible life force is poised and ready to pounce.

I think for a while about the hills while driving home along the spine of Long Mountain (my very favourite journey in The Whole Wide World). Those hills to the east - Pontesbury and Pontesford, the Stiperstones, Corndon, Bromlow Callow and Stapely Common, the Long Mynd behind: how unusually blue they appeared a couple of days ago - I'm seeing Housman's 'blue remembered hills' - although strictly speaking they're a bit south of here.

Inevitably these lines from 'A Shropshire Lad' come to mind:

Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?

That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.

And then, even as I whisper those words - eyes wide, mouth half open - I'm off on an 'away day'. A helter-skelter-brain-storm of poetry and prose; of half forgotten lines ('loveliestoftreesthecherrynow di da di di da etc') and music - Vaughan Williams and Elgar and the young George Butterworth (who set 'A Shropshire Lad' to music), The Song of Songs: 'For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land; The fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away..... and Thomas Hardy and hymns and birdsong, daffodils, light and thunder - even gloomy old RS Thomas - all come crowding round. Such a glorious muddle. There are frogs and spawn - and buzzards soar hopefully and in anticipation over fields of new born lambs (et in arcadia ego) and mew into the large sky.

This is kaleidoscopic thinking and I'm having a lovely time - there are larks ascending:

Skylark

Suddenly above the fields you’re pouring
Pure joy in a shower of bubbles,
Lacing the spring with the blue thread of summer.
You’re the warmth of the sun in a song.

You’re the light spun to a fine filament;
Sun on a spider-thread –
That delicate.

You’re the lift and balance the soul feels,
The terrible, tremulous, uncertain thrill of it –
You’re all the music the heart needs,
Full of its sudden fall, silent fields."

Katrina Porteous
From: The Lost Music, Bloodaxe Books, 1996

......I want to meet the green man. I want to find a flint arrowhead, press seeds into the warming soil, feel heat and light upon my wintered cheek - feel part of this new awakening season and stay connected with the old. These are exhilarating days. Spring's magic must be working - I'm sure it's not just some chemical imbalance in my brain.

Tears before bedtime......

It's all going tremendously well. We're having a wonderful time. Two days of seductive sunshine have brought out the inner Mediterranean in us all; we drink rapidly cooling coffee outdoors, seated on cold metal chairs. (Because we can, damn it!) Daffodils stand like sentries in village and town, magnolia and camellia are fool enough to bloom. The days are longer and brighter, our hearts are lifted.

Here at the end of the Long Mountain peach and nectarine break bud - creased papery petals unfold. They are comehithersugar-pinkdelicious. We're about to plant a row or two of peas, cast a clout.....

....but what is this? The weather forecast? Snow? And frost as well?

Hah. Ah well.