Easter tree

I'm glad I spent a bit of time I didn't have yesterday searching the big cupboard for the box of painted eggs and pruning a few more errant hazel twigs; little things like this make me happy, and I hadn't got round to an Easter tree for several years. The lowest egg, with the sheep and blossom, was painted by J with hand over hand support from me three or four years ago; the others were also our work, when she was a lot younger, during an Easter break at my brother and sister-in-law's house. The woven mat was a sampler made by my mum in the 1950s, the pebble lidded pot a birthday gift made by a friend last year, and the vase was a leaving gift from some of my departmental colleagues when I stopped teaching - so there are a lot of memories here. The Lindt hazelnut bunny is my Easter treat for myself, while the white one is for J, as are the various creme eggs and a larger egg in a big purple box which I judged too unsightly for the photo. She really enjoyed eating some of it after lunch, when we spent a while on the deck; it was another lovely day, not as warm as yesterday but still mild enough to sit outside.  Later, when she was watching the long-awaited Dr Who special, I took a glass of wine and a book to the balcony; it was very peaceful and I was quickly immersed in Tracy Chevalier's The Last Runaway, the story of a young Quaker woman from Dorset who sails to a new life in America; later, there will be a runaway slave and the underground railroad, but just twenty minutes in I'm already immersed in the account of her journey. Tracy Chevalier, who is best known for Girl with a Pearl Earring, researches the historical context of her work meticulously,  and at present I need something engaging and relatively easy to read; I think I will enjoy this, though probably not with the level of enthusiasm and noise with which J responded to Dr Who and the Sea Devils.

I wish you all a happy Easter, and hope that whatever faith, if any, we hold onto, it can be a time of much needed hope, renewal and kindness.