Getting to Know You
Friday, 20 March
"I love the change of seasons," I effused out loud to myself on a recent morning dog walk in the Perche. Whether the natural world is coming alive or preparing for sleep, I feel a thrill at the transformation.
Spring is of course easy to love, hitting that sweet spot between memory and desire, and never more than after a long winter like this one. We have had diluvial rains, day after day of grey, but I refer as much to the metaphysical as the actual weather. The bellicosity of the last months, the guns and bombs and fire and smoke and rubble, the people displaced or dead, leave you feeling hopeless and sick at heart. The emerging sun and the urge to venture outside, see what nature is doing, offer at least a partial antidote.
In school, I learned that the 21st of March was the official start to spring, but that is not always the case. Because the real number of days in a year is 365.2422 (thus February 29 every four), the date can be any time between the 19th and the 21st. It depends on the celestial equinox, ie the moment the sun passes over the extension of the equator in the sky, thus giving equal time to night and day. In 2026, it is today the 20th at 15h45:57 UTC/GMT, to be precise. So Happy Spring to you all.
My declaration of love actually occurred a few weeks ago, the day I shed the winter kit of headlamp for me and gilet jaune for Tasha (hunting season over). To my mind, it’s as much about the return of the light...
...as it is about the buds. And OMG the birds. Every dawn is a jubilant, frenetic symphony. I don’t want to be a birder-bore, but here is my growing playlist: robin, blackbird, song thrush, wren, sparrow, linnet, tit, chiffchaff, willow warbler, yellowhammer and blackcap, singing their little hearts out from the bare trees. I still need the Merlin Bird app to identify their songs - and wouldn't recognise most of these birds if they flew in my face - but because I started listening last April, this spring feels like a return of old friends rather than a first-time encounter.
And that's not including the wood pigeons, cuckoos, ravens, pheasant and woodpeckers who chime in at a distance, beyond the range of the app. Or the pair of northerly-migrating Canada geese this week who circled over and over our fields, honking peevishly. Their wingspan and low-flying bulk mesmerised me. Eventually another pair arrived. More circling and honking, as if the second pair had been sent to resolve a family quarrel with the first. After a few minutes, all apparently forgiven, the four flew back to the pond from whence they'd come. Really, who needs Netflix?
Every spring manages to be comfortingly repetitive and astonishingly new. It's early days - most trees are still baring their delicate souls - ...
...but our garden is on the move. Rosemary, daffodils and tulips are in flower, hellebore too...
The beds have not only filled out handsomely, but I am also now better acquainted with their residents (for recent readers: the garden was designed and outfitted by our green guru Claire and is largely maintained by the fabulous and aptly-named Florie). The Calamagrostis Karl Forestier (grasses), the pyrus salicifolia (weeping pear) and Lavandula intermedia Sussex (lavender) get tuftier by the day ...
After two years, the pittosporum (planted by me!) is finally growing into its space with some help from the euphorbia that felicitously planted itself in the corner...
If I sound knowledgeable, I am not. I am a student and a poor one at that. Multiple visitors, for example, have asked about this attractive plant...
...and I am incapable of remembering Cistus corbariensis, even struggle to recall the common moniker, white rockrose.
Fortunately, I have resources. I often besiege Florie with questions, and much of the above fancy vocabulary was retrieved from the ribbon-bound companion that Claire prepared for us in 2024. I don't want to be a garden-variety bore either, but here are two of the precious seven pages cataloguing the trees and plants at Deux Champs...
While I may not be the sharpest tool in the horticultural shed, I am more invested in our garden with every passing season. And even if this country spring is overshadowed by unease verging on guilt (while I inhale the sweet scent of hyacinthe, others in the world are choking on smoke and burning petrol), its arrival is also a lifeline, a reminder that regeneration is possible.
