Week 8

Pancakes, camellias and the overnight orchard

Hello! I hope you have had a good week. Not a spectacular one here but it feels much milder and things are definitely starting to move, slowly slowly though. Winter really does hold us in its grip for a long time, the earth seems to cling on to it. And it will for a while yet.

These weekly posts are about little seasonal things that we have noticed that are particular to this week. I say we because your comments are as much a part of these posts as my own writing, and between us we build up a picture of the seasonal week in the UK, in Europe, in the US and Canada, and very occasionally if we’re lucky in the tropics and the southern hemisphere too. What is allowed in? Literally anything that marked this week out as different to the last. That is often something in nature, the first appearance of a particular type of flower or a beautiful frosty morning, but it might equally be a scent, a waft of something that makes you think of this winter-spring moment, a texture, a bite of something seasonal, or even something on the telly. This little reminder is inspired by someone in last week’s comments mentioning hot cross buns and then saying ‘this is most probably not the sort of thing for here’. Oh yes it is! Give me your bites into first toasted hot cross buns, slavered with salted butter. Perfect.

Before mine, here’s a selection of your beautiful comments from last week, your Week 7:

It being warm enough for a 'before breakfast sit' in the garden; A dimly lit house on a rainy evening and lighting candles throughout the house; woodpeckers practising their hammering; a first primrose; the funny peacock tailed twirling dance of a male blackbird to a suitably unimpressed female; a lone bird dawn chorus; raucous calls of dunnocks, long-tailed tits and robins; four frogs in the pond, getting geared up; a faint whiff of wild garlic in one very particular spot - a step forward or a step back and it was gone; walking wintry Avebury where the winterbourne (in old English the winter burna ) chalk stream flows now in the winter months; A tawny owl, trying his luck near the open window of the night time bedroom; a slight whiff of spring; the big camellia bush in the garden covered in buds; a vase full of daffodils from the yard; drifts of white, cream and lilac crocuses next to a train platform; a trip to home of snowdrop king EA Bowles; a seal in the water watching all the dogs on the beach like the little mermaid; browsing the seed racks in the garden centre like bookshelves; vast carpets of yellow aconites and mauve crocuses punctuated by clumps of large snowdrops; the sudden change of posters in the Paris metro as all the adverts for spring exhibitions go up; the fuzzy bud casings of magnolia flowers dropped onto the pavement.

Beautiful!

Here’s mine:

Pancakes

On Tuesday night we had pancakes and unusually they were pretty near perfect right from the start. Have I finally, nearly 48 years in, got the knack? I would like to pretend we were total purists and just had the above lemon and sugar only but I’m afraid there was also maple syrup on the table AND sliced banana AND that annoyingly delicious Biscoff spread.

Camellias

The camellias are really suddenly up and about in my street, looking entirely like a flower from another season in all their blousy, colourful, glossy glamour but yet…here they are, amid the sticks and the mud.

The overnight orchard

I go dog walking in my local park every day, pretty much. A few weeks ago I mentioned that it was tree planting season and a few trees had been planted in the park. Very exciting, or so I thought…WELL, the other day I was walking along the bottom of the park and noticed more trees had been planted, loads of them, all since I had last walked the day before. There were quite a few new alders planted along the base of the park where it gets really sodden, a great idea as they will help soak it all up. Along the far side of the park is a path leading up the hill, and there they had planted two rows of five ginkgos - an avenue! It’s going to be spectacular a few autumns from now. We’re going to be mobbed by instagrammers. I was thrilled.

But then, to top it all, I turned the corner and saw the above grid of trees, right across the bottom half of one of the fields. As I walked up I was thinking ‘let it be cherries, let it be cherries’ imagining our very own Sakura hillside. But no, it’s even better…an orchard! Twenty seven apple, pear and plum trees, mostly old West Country and Welsh varieties, from what I can work out, just landed, overnight in the middle of the park. It’s astonishing.

I’m ashamed to say after my initial glee my conditioned mind went to ‘but what about the space for kids to play football?’, when of course those kids get the whole rest of the park. What - rather - about the dreamy kids who like to sit under apple blossom laden trees in hazy sunlight? It looks like they will be very well catered for.

That’s it from me. Tell me about your week and what you have noticed in the comments below. And don’t forget to take some snaps to share in our Sunday chat.