April, this most delicate of months. Soft with new growth, poplars silvering and wild cherry lighting the valley. We can be sure now in the knowledge that we finally have momentum. An unstoppable push with the flash of yellow dandelion, cowslip and cuckoo flower. Ahead of the grass in the meadows for these few days they have their moment, but not for long now that the rush is with us.
This second week of the month, the one just past, is a reliable moment to take in this brief and wonderful window. A time when the newness is as fresh as it ever will be, untarnished by the elements and at its most vital. As green, as shiny or downy and often saturated with an inky stain and bronzing. A colouring that is ephemeral, particular to now and to be savoured for the hand full of days it is at its best. This year we took a fortnight to be in the garden and to be part of it, to look and to do.
I visited Hillside in February this year as winter was turning towards spring. The dried stems of last year’s blooms scratched into the sky. Down beneath many forms of snowdrops were being inspected by Dan and near neighbour, Mary Keen.
It was now six months later and in early September I was back photographing a story about food. It was meant to be done a month or so earlier, but a disappointingly wet and cold August had set things back in the vegetable garden.
The tide has turned and each day the wash of green becomes more intense. Down by the stream, in the woods the ground has already disappeared beneath a flood of wild garlic, nettle, dogs mercury, archangel, cow parsley and wood anemone. You feel the total newness of everything and understand that nothing will ever be this new again. Standing amidst this glowing green as the morning sun lights everything with an intense luminosity you feel simultaneously a sense of grounded calm alongside a persistent, restless energy. Seemingly connected to a primal woodland dwelling memory, the vitality of green makes you feel grounded, alert and alive.
Soon the canopy will close over, filtering green light to make an underwater world of the understorey. But right now the buds are only just breaking. Young leaves have avoided the recent frosts and unfurl to reveal themselves in all their soft vulnerability. Hazel, hornbeam, hawthorn, willow, elder and alder are all awakening, while the oak and the ash are still deciding whether we shall have a wet or dry summer. Ivy has a polished sheen of newness and wherever you look every shade of green is layered one on the other – leaf green, apple green, grass green, sap green, olive green, acid green, sage green, lime green, jade green, emerald green, blue green, chartreuse and citrine.
