Spring or not?

I woke up this morning - ta da! - to a delicate frosting of snow around the house and along the meadow. Very pretty. It has all gone now, in fact it is raining quite steadily, although it is still pretty chilly. But. But, there are definite signs of spring, even this early. There are buds on the elder and the rose across the lane, and all the pots we planted up with tulips have pointy green noses appearing above the compost. What is more, the birds are warbling their little hearts out, despite the dank and damp. Best of all, there is a tiny clump of snowdrops up on the garden - I thought we had lost them all to the squirrels/mice/voles/slugs - whatever it is that considers a nibble of snowdrop bulb to be a delicacy. I would include a photograph, but I am double damned if I am going to go out into all that icy precipitation. We must just use our imaginations, eh?

Another redeeming feature of this morning is that I have been making soup, something that I love to do. I have undoubtedly rabbitted on about it before. I love the preparation - the rounding up of the veggies, the chopping, the gentle cooking in a little olive oil, the handfuls of herbs being added. Today, for instance, half a head of celery, four leeks and a couple of onions, three large carrots, two medium potatoes and a small swede. Red lentils. Sage and thyme. Yum. Simple, non-gourmet, but real food, honest food, heartwarming food. Can;t be beat.

As I did it, I mused on herbs. To me, parsley, sage rosemary and thyme are the British herbs. Yes, I know that the latter two at least are also quintessential mediterranean, but those four are the ones that grow best in our climate. Even rosemary, I usually manage to keep a bush going for a good while - I have lost one in the seventeen years we have been here, but that was a prostrate which I think are more vulnerable. One of the very, very few things that I regret about the dreaded Biggleswade is that in the warmer, dryer climate, I could grow more herbs, and even better, dry my own. An impossibility here, and there are many things that I would love to grow that are equally so. Basil for one - it will linger sadly for three or four weeks, and then quietly fade away. Indoors, not enough light through our small, deep windows, so the plants are spindly and unhealthy, eventually succumbing to white fly. It took me a long time to learn not to even try. Parsley gets carrot root fly, but will just about make it through the summer on an outdoor windowsill. Actually, herbs are in general pretty problematic in this cold and wet northern climate, and I have it in mind to do something very different this year, and move everything in to pots that I can make very free-draining and move around if necessary.

I can dream, anyway.

Which I did last night (perhaps why I am waxing whatever here, now.) I was the other side of the Hayle estuary (I don't know even if there is one...) The sun was shining, gleaming on the water. I was holding the hand of an unseen small person, looking towards a grey, stone house, with a short flight of steps leading up to the porched front door. "Granny used to visit that house when she was a little girl" I said.

I woke up feeling very sad.

Whatever.