Early May already, and weeks have elided into months since I returned from New Zealand. Neil is now home, and busy planting vegetables, and our Dubai life turned up on a 40ft container, disgorging countless boxes of books, crates of Lego and those odd boxes marked ‘miscellaneous’ which you know can lead only to a rummage through unsorted back-of-cupboard detritus that we didn’t quite get round to throwing away last year. There is also that ‘feels like Christmas’ moment when you unbox something and it resonates, like the huge cobalt blue pot which was home to salad seeds, amaranth and baby papayas for years, and which with its deep glaze would be too hot to touch by high summer; glassware, in many shapes and forms, from goblets to cake stands (not one, but three) - testifying to the joyful entertaining there, and of course the photos holding so many memories of high days and holidays with much-missed friends. Little time to dwell on the past though, as the house reverberated with contractors tasked with extracting us, decoratively speaking, from the 20th to the 21st century, providing the perfect excuse, if any were needed, to flee to the garden.
After a mild February, it has been cold here, and very wet, with late frosts last week. I am still digging up the victims of this winter’s brutality - hebes, sedums (hylotelephiums), erigeron, the wormwoods from the herb bed and my huge rosemary from the terrace, and tulips ravaged by virus - all undone by the winter week of -7 which came hard on the heels of heavy rain. There are no solutions: rain is badly needed, and we were overdue a properly cold spell, but coming after the extremes of last summer’s drought, these were testing times for plants.
We tend to focus on the borders at this time of year, eager to see colour returning to replace the browns and greys, beaming at primroses and bluebells and lady’s smock, but if you look up there is drama on high too, as the giants of the garden ponder their appearance. Our huge lime tree is only just in leaf, while the pair of walnuts are still spikily resistant. The whitebeam ghosts by the pond, the silvery grey leaves forming a perfect cone, each branch carrying its little candelabra flower.
The oak has only just come into flower, with gleaming baby leaves slowly uncurling, bestowing a golden aura on the tree. Oaks are monoecious, meaning each tree carries separate male and female catkins and flowers, allowing reproduction (through acorns) to occur without need of another oak nearby.
Walking past a low hanging branch fluttering with the goldgreen filaments, there is something odd about this moment, the thought of an oak flowering. The moment of vulnerability, of exposure, in this enormous organism feels disconcerting somehow, as if 200 year old trees have no business with the frivolities of flowering. We grow up with references to the oak, beloved here as in many countries, and immortalised in history, religion and mythology as shelter to kings, guardians of biblical righteousness, stalwarts of Norse gods, heart of the British Navy, and now here are these tiny, delicate flowers upon which the tree’s future depends, looking as if they could be ripped apart by a gust of wind. From fragility to full armour - after anything from six to eighteen months depending on variety, acorns, like their parents, are stuffed full of tannic acid, and girded in their shells, ready for the world. And after contemplating the flowers, I find testimony to their success in the nearby border - a little colony of baby oaks.
Chilly days and colder nights have affected other garden inhabitants. I have seen bumble bee queens for the last few weeks, but not in the same numbers as last year. In the wood we watched a tawny mining bee rootling around in the bluebells, and I have been divebombed by a few bee flies while weeding. Best of all was seeing a handful of ashy mining bees investigating the paving slab gaps and south facing wall of the house with a view to setting up home - much as I love the big bumblers, it is these little panda faced silver and black bees which win my vote every time. Butterflies seem to only just be on the wing, with a few speckled woods, small blues and an occasional brimstone gracing us with that acid flash of yellow. Sometimes you have to look really closely though, as when I thought there was a speck of leaf debris in a tulip, then realised I was looking at the exceedingly elegant home of a tiny green orb spider.
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