May demands a daily vigil as the surge continues. First iris blooming from spears that rose as fast as the asparagus and the peonies sounding across the garden. Just last week – and for a moment I felt like I had time in my hands to watch the unfurling – the Paeonia ‘Late Windflower’ were arching bud over bronze foliage. This week their simple white cups have tilted outward to reveal the boss of yellow stamens. It is a time of plenty and I am pleased I divided the original clump so that they run the path to draw you out into the landscape. To the creamy hawthorn blooming in the ditch and the feeling of gratitude that I am not exhibiting at Chelsea and having to drag myself away from the real time and being lucky enough to be part of it in the tending.   

The ditch and the environments we have been fostering beyond the garden provide the early draw. The hawthorn by the bridge that leads to the Tump is grown out now and away from the stump it once was when it was flailed by the farmer who lived here before us. I have planted Clematis montana var. wilsonii to scale its branches and flower once the hawthorn dims and the thickets of bramble that once prevented access to the water are replaced by a stand of Cornus mas. The cornelian cherries came into bloom in mid-February and are large enough now to make a place in which we can play to their shade with snowdrops, primrose and leucojum.