Surprise

We went to a Warwickshire field and dug two holes. Unlike Charlie Clarke, a Birmingham café owner and metal detectorist of six months standing, we did not find a 300 gram, 24 carat gold pendant and 75 link chain, dating from the Tudor period, inscribed with a Tudor rose, H and K (Henry VIII and (K)Catherine of Aragon) and the Latin message "forever yours". If the charming TV sit-com The Detectorists had featured this as the plot line of their cheesy Xmas special (which did in fact feature a gold find in a field), they would have been laughed off screen as merely absurd. The outrageous, clichéd details of this story do everything to undermine its credibility - and the suggestion that maybe it was a gold medal at one of Henry's tournaments does nothing to bring it back to earth - but so far the experts are soberly confirming its authenticity. Nevertheless, I bet the words "Piltdown Man" have passed more than one set of lips

We were not digging for gold, we were planting a couple of trees, but one of the trees is sometimes called a "golden rain tree" (more commonly Pride of India). If I have done my research right, it might eventually help with a golden rain of honey. The other one is a "Bee-bee tree"; I can do clichés too. I bought five other trees, including some slightly more conventional natives, but they are too small to face the rigours of our over-fertile ex-meadow, so they can have a season in a pot. That also gives us time to decide where to put them - it was hard enough finding a spot for these two. "Planting a few trees" has become as much an annual event as marmalade-making or the seasonal rhythms of beekeeping. After a few years of iteration, "a few trees" has become quite a lot!

The bees caught out attention because Mrs M spotted a lot of corpses on the landing board of one of the hives. There is a large "die off" of bees in every colony during the winter, especially after new year. They are getting old, only the strongest make if through the whole winter. During cold weather there can be a build up of dead bodies inside the hive, which the colony struggle to remove when things warm up. If necessary, they just carry them outside without transporting them some distance from the hive, as they normally would. I opened up the entrance, gave them a cheery "bring out your dead", and gave a helping hand with a beekeeping implement (a 'hive tool') that has a suitably hooked end. The things you do for love...

In front of the hives was this single crocus, the first I have seen in flower, planted by a friend a few years ago with a kindly thought for the bees. The squirrels have found most of what was planted, but this one endures. You never know what is hidden underground