March 12, the day before Mum’s birthday. While Dudley was the king of his vegetable patch, his orchard and croft, his dreams of an egg empire, it was Lilian who more quietly managed the boys and her flowers.
Spring snowdrops and primroses often conjure her. Particularly at the summerhouse where I feel some of her patient spirit still lives. Our house near the sea, like hers at Heron’s Reach. The meadow and cottage garden flowers echo there, too.
The snowdrops are out when we arrive. The primroses are primping up not far behind. Our main job, though, is to deal with the wood. Mine is mostly chopping the remaining trimmed trunks, while Henri’s is to stack it in the shed. Neat, like an architect.
There is something intimate about splitting logs from your felled trees. Laying in another winter or two’s heat. Watching the smoke drift to the sea.
The old stack is littered with hazelnut shells from last season’s harvest, stashed there by the squirrels. But it is the badger and moles that are again on my mind.
The badger’s taken to raiding and crushing the bird feeders. I find them torn from the trees. Broken in the grass, emptied of seed. I reshape and refill and hang them higher. Hopefully, far out of reach. The birds quickly forgive us and most have returned by the time we leave.
The moles, though, have been left alone and the grass is littered with their hills. A few have broken through one of the wildflower meadow beds.
I take this as inspiration. We wheelbarrow away mole soil to a new corner where we’ll grow the bee-friendly flower patch. A few flattened others I scatter with blue chicory seed and an early flower mix that says it can be sown in February. It feels a little early, but the sun’s shining and the rest will happily wait until our long Easter weekend.
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