The first blue of a bluebell season
Having left my part time job at Christmas we’ve survived two months now without that regular and comforting clang of money arriving in the bank. We’ve both been working on the farm in the meantime and this is the beginning of what we hope will be our busiest time 0f year, when gardeners and plenty of others buy willow, hazel sticks for their beans and sweet peas and any number of other things. We hope sales will increase and all will be well.
Last week we spent another day in Bottoms’ corner, Jane preparing bean poles and pea sticks, the first batches of the season; me continuing cutting hazel, for the last time of the winter. Some days over the last couple of months, whilst doing much the same, I’ve considered my sanity somewhat negatively, but today was different. It may have been the light in the morning or a fleeting glimpse of the sun after some freezing blasts of westerly wind, later in the afternoon, that allowed me to see a day of hard labour as fun, but the thing that gave just how lucky we are some kind of clarity, was Jane finding a single bluebell flower showing a first flash of miraculous colour. Truly wonderful.