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There’s the weather forecast and there’s crocu

There’s the weather forecast and there’s crocus. A floral litmus test for coat flung to one side days and the other sort in March with a slow creeping chill. Or maybe just mornings on the cusp of either. The bottom set of petals outgrowing the one above in a daily exercise of Nyctinastic motion - zipping themselves up and tucking themselves in at night before loosening the jacket and starting all over again. Nature at work and endlessly awe inspiring .

It’s been a week of sifting through the details and weighing it all up, but now we’ve fixed on a date of the 29th March for re-opening, and couldn’t be more excited to be sharing Spring - come the end of the month - at full tilt. The crocus will have bowed out , but with any luck and the magnolias will be in full flourish.

The chatter has already snapped into gear, but the

The chatter has already snapped into gear, but the mornings moulded by mist. Yesterday came into view somewhere around midday: entire fields enveloped by a thick knitted dernier.

A colour carpet that requires a full tilt to gathe

A colour carpet that requires a full tilt to gather in the edges, losing the opening in the glade and the reason why the plush is so uniquely patterned.

Yellow. Inescapable all of a sudden, and ushering

Yellow. Inescapable all of a sudden, and ushering in with three days of unbroken sunshine almost a giddy expectation for March.

Crocus with a theatre of fire and ice.

Crocus with a theatre of fire and ice.

And then the sun shines a spotlight on everything

And then the sun shines a spotlight on everything that was somehow missed in the gloaming, and you forget the squelch and what’s been - too distracted by every bud and sprig positively glowing.

Morning at full honk.

Morning at full honk.

100mm thick with a mossy carpet underlay.

100mm thick with a mossy carpet underlay.

The morning has shrugged off its torpor. A full tw

The morning has shrugged off its torpor. A full two and a half minutes more nimble by the day. A pace only matched by the colour flooding into frame.

It’s the weather outside the window in Jane Aust

It’s the weather outside the window in Jane Austen that is the nudge about inner rumblings of emotion - much gnashing of teeth, and that was just the elements. February has done much thrashing too, but yesterday pivoted on its heels. Rinsing off the sloup and emerging blinking into the light.

Mud splash. Applies in equal parts to snowdrops an

Mud splash. Applies in equal parts to snowdrops and knees in February.

An overhang of drip, and with it, ripples dotting

An overhang of drip, and with it, ripples dotting the surface and expanding outwards. A change from the other sort of drip on endless repeat .

It’s felt more granite rock face than flinty ski

It’s felt more granite rock face than flinty skies, but it only takes a glimmer and a fleeting humour to be reminded that bog snorkelling is a seasonal sport....

There’s a brackishness to February. A saltiness

There’s a brackishness to February. A saltiness that’s neither river or sea. Neither Winter or Spring, but a choppy turbulence of the two negotiating their differences in density, current and flow. Crocus before the window rattler that was last night.

The snowdrops had a head start of a few weeks befo

The snowdrops had a head start of a few weeks before the first few slips of mauve sidled in, and only then in the company of the camellias and cyclamen. So before the magnolias come along and steal their thunder...

February should be somewhere in the dictionary def

February should be somewhere in the dictionary definition of ‘kinetic’ with its spring loaded momentum that hurtles forward gathering pace. Branches burgeoning and the soil erupting into life in multiples, and each week outpacing the one before. Only more obvious with the number of chimes of the clock at the beginning of the month and where we are now. A full ten strikes with the morning groggy and only beginning to come to ( a full ten if it hadn’t been a slow fumbling with the phone to miss a beat) and now stirring somewhere between the chimes of 7 and 8.

Barely 7am and there’s already a few chords from

Barely 7am and there’s already a few chords from the dawn chorus in play. A hullabaloo thickening in volume and earlier to rise with each day. Snowdrops framed by overarching tassels and a lingering sweetness of sarcococca and hamamelis - the seasonal firsts carrying Spring along in its slipstream.

Before a segue into rain.

Before a segue into rain.

Love in a month when the cold is measured by the a

Love in a month when the cold is measured by the angle of stoop and by the time it takes for the fingers to defrost and stop tingling. Steely skies and then this. Unbowed hearts.

The temperature’s climbed down into the minuses

The temperature’s climbed down into the minuses and still there’s an insistence to bloom.

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