AS IN THE LONG AGO

Here's a link  to a small selection of photos of the ash trees at the bottom of my garden. I've taken at least one picture every day I've been at home for the last eleven months, and the weather has come full circle from the week when I began.

This white celandine is one of my favourite things in the garden. I bought it years ago from a local plant sale and in flowered for several years, only to vanish. For two years there was no sign of it, and then I discovered it growing in another part of the garden entirely. Now it's reappeared in its original position too. I love the way seedlings pop up all over the garden at this time of year. The only difficulty is sorting them from the weeds. I don't think I'll ever have to buy parsley or coriander seeds again - they sprout all over the vegetable garden.

I've posted photos of these ash trees at the bottom of my garden before. I decided this year to take a photo every day - as far as possible. I've had to cheat a little, taking more than one some days and none at all on others, when I was at work in January and February and it was dark when I left and returned, and when I've been away for a few days. I couldn't take them at the same time every day, but I don't mind that. In January there were several shots that looked identical, but there's always a way of telling them apart - birds in the tree-tops, tractors in the fields, all sorts of small details. 

I know I've been neglecting this blog, but February was cold and dark and March was very busy. And now spring is here. We visited the National Botanical Gardens of Wales near Carmarthen on a cool, breezy Easter Monday. I can't decide which greenhouse I like best. The one with the plastic bottles is a lot cheaper, but going inside Norman Foster's dome is like being transported to a different country.

For the past thirty years or so I've been walking a circular route at Covehithe on the north Suffolk coast. Covehithe is a small place with a huge ruined church which contains a smaller church inside it. The road runs past the church, a few cottages, and a couple of farms before ending abruptly at the top of a cliff. Lumps of tarmac regularly fall onto the beach below. The walk involves covering a mile or so of beach below the cliffs and returning along the top through fields. The sea has taken huge bites from the soil in places where crops were growing last year or the year before. Today was the first time I haven't been able to complete the walk. I don't know if the tide was unusually high, but it was extraordinary to watch lumps of land actually in the process of disappearing. And it was great to be outside in warm sunshine again!

If you walked due north between these trees you would find no higher land before you reached the North Pole. I love telling people that. They never believe me, but it's true! I see it's been a while since I wrote anything here, but I have been busy writing, honestly. But today I drove to work over wonderfully deserted snow covered roads only to find that school was closed, so I had an extra day to meet the deadline. And time to do this.