I popped the phone into my dressing gown pocket and switched off the lights to go upstairs. All the furniture in the room was visible and outside a silver light was filling one quarter of the sky: the full moon behind lacey clouds. My phone took a few minutes off alarm clock duty to let me focus on what I saw – through a glass darkly – what I saw with my inward eye was more than my external eye in the camera could record. It was worth remembering and, I hope, worth sharing.
This oak was in leaf a few days before the trees in the woodland behind it. The golden green will soon darken up. The path winds up from Canterbury city to the University of Kent, a popular walk with local people and a breath of fresh air for university people going about their business.
I have typed up many a post for Will’s Turned Stones these last months but all in my imagination. Let’s reclaim one of them this evening!
A week or so ago I was sitting in the L’Arche garden at Saint Mildred’s, staring at this forsythia, golden in the sun. I had just given a rooted, flowering cutting to one of the houses but still had this one to enjoy.
Of a sudden, a bunch of the flowers took off and flew along the hedgerow. It was a brimstone butterfly, one of the first heralds of spring in the insect world. This one at rest looks like a beech leaf, but in flight is bright yellow, like the forsythia, even more so when the sun is shining through its wings.
A special moment to be grateful for.
Well, we’ve always thought of Valentine’s Day as the birds’ wedding day, but this year the bouquet goes to the garden frogs. Mrs Turnstone ran indoors to grab her phone and record the event. We shall have to watch the weather and protect the eggs from frost, if we get any. It is unusually warm. But we have had lying snow in February, half a lifetime ago.
At least we can do a bit for the climate by helping the frogs who choose our pool. That may include covering it to prevent the blackbirds from fishing.
The hazel we planted a few years ago on a scrap of waste land was not in flower on New Year’s Day, but yesterday it had shaken out the first lambs’ tails. Can Spring be far behind?
A peaceful and prosperous New Year to each and every reader! God bless,
Will.
Here is an extract from a letter from the writer Charles Lamb to his friend Vincent Novello, the musician and publisher, May 9, 1826. May can occasionally feel as cold as March, as Lamb asserts, ready to put more coal on the fire.
Dear N.
You will not expect us to-morrow, I am sure, while these damn’d North Easters continue. We must wait the Zephyrs’ pleasures. By the bye, I was at Highgate on Wensday, the only one of the Party. Â Yours truly C. LAMB.
Summer, as my friend Coleridge waggishly writes, has set in with its usual severity. Kind rememb’ces to Mrs. Novello &c.
from “The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 6 Letters 1821-1842.
Beech trees in Maytime.
These two were in the leaf litter under the sage bush clinging onto that big leaf. No blackbird or thrush around to gobble them up and no crops for them to devour. A few sage leaves went into the evening risotto, and rosemary, but no parsley or thyme!
As I left the garden I noticed the fresh green nettles; March is the time to harvest them and I had rubber gloves in my pocket! I did have a couple of those sycamore seedlings to deal with, but plenty of fresh nettles where the tree fell over a year ago churning up long-buried seed.
The soup awaits attention tomorrow lunchtime. Full of vitamins but the stings have boiled away.
These lines are part of a song in the Compleat Angler of Izaac Walton, written by John Chalkhill, his relative by marriage. Chalkhill was a friend of the poet Edmund Spenser.
Snow on the ground in the photograph, but one day in Spring I chose this piece for a Summer’s day, trusting that there might be ‘excessive heat’ coming the reader’s way. I was editing it soon after cutting down osiers; the previous year’s growth of coppiced willow, as seen above. Often they are grown within a slow-moving river. Then again, I find myself walking under willows almost every day beside the River Stour. I often had occasion to shelter under willows during my time as a very incompleat angler in Ireland. I did catch a very respectable pike once and good eating it was too!
If the sun's excessive heat Make our bodies swelter, To an osier hedge we get For a friendly shelter! Where in a dike, Perch or pike, Roach or dace, We do chase, Bleak or gudgeon, Without grudging, We are still contented. Or we sometimes pass an hour Under a green willow, That defends us from a shower, Making earth our pillow Where we may Think and pray, Before death Stops our breath: Other joys Are but toys, And to be lamented.
Azaleas are part of the rhododendron family, which means that they like an acid soil, not the alluvial, chalky ground at the L’Arche garden in Canterbury. This one was unhappy, planted out of its comfort zone, till our colleague Maurice C. came along. He dug out a hole, lined it with polythene sheeting, filled it with ericaceous compost, and moved azalea in, just before lockdown.
later I applied a little judicious pruning, but he did all the hard work. It has paid off as you see.
Congratulations Maurice! And thank you. From now on, Spring will be that much brighter each year.
Will Turnstone 
