after the rain

after the rain, spring is here today. the sun on my back was almost hot.

in the garden the birds are busy; goldfinches whistling and zzzzing; the thrush muttering his subsong from the ivy in the sycamore; the bluetits are having a go at enlarging the entrance hole in the tit box – they do it every year, I don’t know why but I can hear the tap tap as one of them pecks away at it.

I am preparing pots and the kiln for glazing.

the hellebores seem happy with their mulching and exhibit masses of big juicy flowers. more crocuses keep appearing out of the mulch; satiny purple and sunshine orange.

the ditches at the bottom of Blood Hill are full of snowdrops too.

walking along the woodshore hazel catkins dangle like fuzzy pale green raindrops blurred by slow exposure.

yesterday’s rain still gathers on every twig. the ponds in the wood are full of water, the ditches slimy with decomposed leaves.

the beech tree, iron grey with all her limbs reaching up between the ash and the oak.

a thrush sings from deep in the wood. new buds are opening into leaf on the honeysuckle, and the primrose crowns are full of tight new leaves. buzzards call to each other overhead.

in the mud rucked up by the shepherd’s land-rover there are muntjac hoofprints.  larks sing above the big field that rises alongside the lane.

two early primroses in flower already where the hedge sides have been cleared; there will be a good show of them this year.

the big pots are quite awkward to glaze; I splash my feet and the floor filling them with the liner glaze and pouring it out again. the blue glaze is in too small a bin and it overflows – I continue to push down – too late to do anything else. glazing has to be done in one fell swoop, and outdoors.