Branching

I awarded myself a morning of outdoor therapy in the apiaries. The physical work of selecting equipment, lifting, moving, assembling is a meditation. I applied flame to the wood - a purging - the sort of thing that was once done to houses to rid them of fatal infection, which is exactly my purpose. It has already been done once, but abundance of caution is now our philosophy, and the task requires focus

The day was brighter and warmer than forecast, the sky bluer, the light kinder. We have a refugee cock pheasant who has used the apiary as a winter asylum. Less suspicious than usual, he came close enough to look me in the eye; a ridiculous, handsome thing that makes me gently smile

Spring stirs; the blackthorn in the apiary is not yet in flower, but the snow white of wild plum on the hill was catching the light. Buds are bursting, there are some celandine flowers, time is accelerating, life is burgeoning. The sad discord is all too plain

Usually these fritillaries are hard to find in long grass until the flowers appear, but this one stood proud. I like the echo of the small plant and the ancient oak; also the neat, even curve formed by the tips of the ash branches. I read that when the Midlands fields were enclosed, hedges of whitethorn, not blackthorn, were planted. In them were trees - mostly elm and ash, to grow into shelter. The elm have gone, of course, and the ash may well be following. Sad loss