The sting of young nettles is never more so than now, when ignited by the first stirrings at the end of winter. The familiar ringing that lingers on my hands into the evenings is something I know well from splitting the snowdrops. I do this as soon as their flowers dim and there is a window before the nettles get away in earnest and suddenly there are demands back up in the garden. This close and detailed work is something I savour for the opportunity to witness the first signs of life on my knees and with time to take in the environment down by the stream. The smell of the wild garlic as you bruise its first leaves and the close-up observation of sprung celandines, pressed flat against the earth, with their distinctive shiny leaves like miniature waterlilies. The first green hellebores, green upon green, with ivy and moss and dog’s mercury. And, as we come up the ditch and out into the light, precocious primroses and the gold of early marsh marigolds offering up flower to early bumblebees where the sun hits the warmest flanks.

With the repetitiveness of a simple task, you begin to see that winter is waning, one cycle overlapping the next in a quickening surge towards spring. Primroses appearing as the snowdrops lose their lustre and the first wild daffodils taking the snowdrop’s place as if the timing had been planned for. I make a note to myself to remember to plant more Narcissus pseudonarcissus. The small group by a fallen oak that I planted in-the-green a decade ago have seeded and the seedlings are just beginning to flower. The heavy seed from the parent plants dropped at the reach of the seedpod and a little more where the seed tumbled downhill. Five or six years to flower and then another drop from the second generation and seedlings to follow on in a slow but sure expansion of their territory.