One small gain from the pandemic and all those months sitting around at home and wandering around the garden is that I have actually been aware of the changing of the seasons. For most of my life, I suppose I haven’t really paid much attention to the different seasons and, as befits a ‘senior’, I had long concluded that we didn’t really have seasons anymore in Britain. It’s always the same all year round, except that sometimes it’s cold and sometimes it’s even colder. I was so wrong.
Since we – well, my partner – decided to transform our garden by having a wild part, a new pond and raised beds for growing things, the change of the season is now blindingly obvious and spring is the time when everything really changes.
The darling buds of March are appearing and the trees that looked more like long sticks are starting to gain colour. And best of all, our new pond is packed with frogspawn. Everywhere, if you look, seasons are slowly but surely changing.
The grass had its first cut of the year and the sides of the garden were strimmed. In a few weeks we be able to uncover our summer table at the bottom of the garden, which will on Fridays become the location for the Open Arms and we will be able to utilise our new shed, replacing the ramshackle leaning tower of Stoke Gifford.
I am not quite ready to become a proper gardener and I am not sure I ever will be, but I will try to do a little more than just cutting things down and mowing the lawn.
Either way, spring is here, literally so in the meteorological sense. Lighter days are coming.
