One hundred thousand steps through April
With attachments, and noise and oh it is no holiday but spring is springing!
Hello dear friends, readers and writers, new subscribers and curious passers by, as always, I am delighted you are here, welcome to my - usually very late - A Coloured Month.
I had two weeks off during April for spring half-term holidays, not that I noticed… so few hours were spent in a way that even remotely resembled relaxation. Everything during spring break has to have a practical reason, there is no holiday just different work, work with a schedule, work attached to various cantankerous mechanical tools, work with no rest until dark The only respite, frequent April showers!
I thought winter had packed up its sombre clothes and hiked off to lower parts of the planet. While the countryside here, at least that which faces south, is lush and green, there is still a constant chill in the air that is causing the work of spring to be super arduous. With the exception of the barley planted all over the hill which I’m sure grows taller by the hour, everything is just that bit later than usual.
Bordering the lane, the verges are just beginning to overflow. Spring flowers, stunted last year by terrible drought, are brighter and more abundant than ever before... I long to carry armfuls back to my kitchen but don’t have time.
“The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity.”
― Walt Whitman
In thinking glorious gardens…
An enormous and unattainable dream I have every year is to reproduce a garden of flowers and vegetables the like of which my father would have stood back and been proud of, the way he did - and had every right to - his own.
Every year at the start of spring, my lists of chores and wishes are endless, written, pinned somewhere I can’t possibly miss and ignored for what ever reason, weather, time, money - always that! But it is work I do awash with waves of nostalgic love, wishing that I could bombard him with questions while he puffs sweet smoke into the air from his pipe, a pint of his homemade beer on the table while his fingers rifle through his countless packets of seeds in his seed box. He had the most beautiful hands, strong but gentle, the hands of an almost life long gardener - I long to see his long brown fingers rifling seeds again, to catch the scent of pipe smoke and the yeasty smell of his not quite finished fermenting beer he could never wait to drink.
I separate sighs, the nostalgic from the more practical ‘I am never going to get through all this without help’, and make a start - at least I try!
For me, there is a very real bonus to physical work in my garden, a part from the sheer joy of breathing fresh air and being outdoors once again after a winter of diving for the warmth of a dry kitchen every ten minutes. Not only do I have the blissful pleasure of no noise, I don’t have to conjugate anything either! I don’t have to think, I simply just do and if I want to concentrate on something, it can be anything at all without having a French grammar crisis erruption because I’ve misused the ‘plus-que-parfait subjunctive’ - 1je ne pensait pas que tu eusses cueilli toutes les poireaux - or whether I’ve remembered the how of calculus or functions or trigonometry. There is nothing at all more taxing than deciding if the weed I’m about to pull is pretty enough to simply be and the absolute pleasure of feeling crumbly earth in my hands, healthy and honest in the optimistic hope of a glorious and productive harvest.
But I digress, I have digressed…
My garden is not glorious, mostly it isn’t even ready to be planted, the little I have sown, germinated during warm days, is now fighting its hardest to survive through frigid frosty mornings, howling north winds and frequent deluges of heavy rain and hail.
My garden is sad.
And, a whole compost of diversions are tipped in my path by the barrow load!
My dear old neighbour has failing eyesight, people in the village are complaining that he is driving - people off the road - when he shouldn’t be! This is a fragile subject, one I have dreaded and avoided for many months. I ask myself the question frequently, how - as a blow-in ex-pat does this fall on my shoulders - can I begin to tell a nonagenarian that he must stop driving? That he can no longer be independent?
I brace myself for the conversation that must be.
One chicken vanishes into thin air; there is no tell tale trail of feathers left by a fox, no blood or entrails, there is no evidence of any others being spooked, a pine marten would have killed them all… a wild cat is a possibility but unlikely. Whatever predator it may be, it will be back, this I know and the chicken run is in need of repairs which makes the work top of the list urgent. Two precious days later, the entire run is moved and re-errected with new chestnut posts, old chicken wire is straightened and reused, the chicken-house mucked out and new hay now lines their clean nesting boxes.
They haven’t laid an egg since but they haven’t disappeared either!
On four separate occasions I drive the nearly 80 kilometre round trip, on an errand of mercy, to the adorable and now heavily pregnant, work colleague who is looking after Sonny for me until I can find replacement ewes for those so savagely killed back in January. Between then and now, her own three ewes have been busy producing, three male lambs… which means three castrations by yours truly. I desperately want to say no when she asks but of course, I cannot, no matter how ghastly I find the request.
I leave, armed with the necessarily lethal green bands and application tool and all the professional bravado I can muster - the mere act of picking up the bag sets a stomach churning dread in motion - drive like I’m auditioning for a starring role in All Creatures Great and Small - sooner there, sooner done - rip the panel protecting the under workings of my poor old VW on part of an old iron locking system as I reverse up her drive, spend the next hour chasing two very lively lambs, ten minutes searching for the right body parts, another ten trying to contain them in their tiny sacs and another trembling ten - this is the scariest part - ensuring I’ve avoided other tiny body parts before torturing the poor little loves with an evil green band, both of us with tears in our eyes as they hobble off on legs buckling in agony.
I foresee much time spent in that deepest of deep abyss’ reserved in hell for those who practice cruelty to animals and, I definitely wouldn’t have won the part in any film unless it was starring Cruella Deville!
I return slowly, in all senses, damaged parts dragging…
Various layerings…
Regardless of unwanted obligations the ever changing, infinitely varied layers of the year are stacking up, as they do, despite any inclemency of weather or mood - Spring advances, gently - mostly - exploding with floral loveliness. I am still ever hopeful of swallows appearing and search every corner of the barn for bundles of hissing fluff that just might be owlets. I wish only that the moments of warmth could be bottled for those less accommodating to flourishes of bare arms.
There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature -- the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.”
― Rachel Carson
Endlessly enjoyable is Seth’s eagerness to spend every spare second outside hunting treasure - any treasure - in inaccessible places. This is not just a youthful passing phase, it is a passion. We cover vast stretches of woodland, scouring every, deepest ravine, every empty or abandoned building, every possible fissure in the rocks regardless of weather! This time accompanied by the sweetest chorus of bird song, showers of the April kind, always so much wetter than any other and all the usual high spirits of my long legged son who bounds off like a gazelle - oh for the days when he had to run to keep top with me - the moment he realises there is no priceless caché to be unearthed. He keeps a running total of steps taken on his phone, announces after four days that he has taken just over one hundred thousand and I wonder just how many I have taken to keep up…
Wishing you much merriment in this month of May dear ones…
With love
Something I have loved this week:
Kimberly wrote a beautiful an exquisitely and profoundly beautiful essay titled ‘In defense of weeds’ the first in her new series. I am impatient for the next…
Skinny green breaths gently returned me to the now. Hands busy, head hushed, I unbecame into the season—my diminuendo’ed purpose inside an orchestra of renewal.
Tap below please, her words are divine.
translation - ‘I didn’t think you would pick all the leeks’
Oh Susie, so stunning.
Beautiful memories of your father.
I order you to go outside and pick those flowers that you rush past and put them in a jar in your kitchen. Each time you look at them be grateful for all the energy you put into creating your haven on the hill. There is beauty in the chaos, and the weeds. There is no taming nature.
And you still find time for your writing and all your correspondence!
I have no idea how you do it all.
With love and respect. 🙏
Your inexhaustible energy amazes me. I have single pages of To Do Lists while yours are chapters of endless pages. Love all your beautiful photos and phrases created to convey each of your marvellous stories. Big hugs and much love 💕