Hello! And welcome to April…what a beauty. Here we have wall-to-wall sunny springtime with a chill. I have a bunch of bright pink tulips on the table in a green glass vase, and two cards. The washing baskets are empty. Tomatoes go out in the morning and come in at night. Everyone is smiling at each other in the park.
The nature of this almanac-like work means that there is a lot of ME around at the beginning of the month so should you be looking for a bit of surplus Leendertz in your life please check out…
…my podcast with Ffern, As the Season Turns, the April edition of which came out on the 1st. This month is is about bats, oak tree lore, cuckoos and cherry blossoms and you can find it here, or indeed wherever you find your podcasts.
…and my latest Scribehound Gardening column on gardening with the moon. This one is about the lore behind planting potatoes on Good Friday, and its neat and odd link with the moon. There is currently a spring sale on and you can get your first month - me plus 30 different garden writers, one each day - for £1.
Now to business. This is our weekly community post in which we track the seasons, week by week and month by month. I tell you one thing I have noticed that felt particular to this week in the year and then you tell me yours in the comments and at the end of the month I weave them all into a big, beautiful poem of the month, (like this one).
Here’s mine:
Changing tulips
These are my beautiful species tulips (I think Tulipa clusiana ‘Cynthia’ but I’m not exactly sure) and they are out, butterfly like, all over the garden. They are tall and willowy and a bit gangly but that is part of the charm, and they are lovely among primroses and muscari. Real spring magic when they are backlit. The colour is perfection, to my mind.
An odd thing: I planted them two years ago because I love tulips in general but I don’t get around to planting them every year because - well, blimey, who does? And then they just fade away, looking slightly scabbier each year. I fancied tulips that would perennialise over time - not fade away but clump up, and that is what the species tulips do. I also loved this sunset-like colouring but then last year all of them, really every single one of them, came up red. I was gutted but thought hey ho never mind, I’ve clearly been sold a duff batch but I’m not going to dig them up and send them back. And then this year, this! Every one of them is this colour! The oddest thing, I’ve never known anything like it. I am thrilled.
That’s it from me, now over to you. What have you been noticing/doing/baking that has felt particularly ‘this week of the year’? Answers in the comments below please.
On a twilight run, the temperature dropping dramatically along with the sun, little bats swooping against a deep orange sunset. I was most delighted to see them because I was listening to the podcast as I ran!
Lunch in the garden, a slight chill in the air but glorious blue skies. Goldfinches twittering overhead and the sound of an ice cream van at school finishing time