Sap Moon

...Plough Moon

Last night’s Moon of Many Names – Sap, Plough, Lenten, Worm, Chaste, Death, Crust

While a mist still hung in the valley, this morning the sky was so uniformly blue it seemed quite natural, hardly worth mentioning, despite its long, conspicuous absence. It was as bright as the proverbial button, casually left undone to let in the unfamiliar, deliciously welcome warmth. I have the vestiges of a between-seasons cold and I felt the tight tubes in my chest soften and relax – the first time I’ve been able to sit for a whole hour outside for a long while.

They say a person’s garden reflects who they are. Unfenced, merging into brambly, mosaic woodland, my garden is an ongoing experiment in possibility, slightly wayward and dishevelled, but not without a certain charm. The flowering currant is pinking up, the leaves on the elder making their early foray into the lengthening days. Because of the protracted cool, snowdrops are still in bloom, propellers spinning in the sunshine, yellow aconites shape-shifting from fists to jazz hands. Crocuses show off their bright orange fans, laden with pollen for early browsing bees and insects, hellebores shake loose their gothic colours. Perfect dewdrop buds constellate the climbing hydrangea.

The garden is on the brink of its best season, rehearsing a joyful choreography of waking up. And this year more than ever am I grateful for it.

The birds know something is changing too, racketing away with surroundsound songs. I opened the Merlin app while I was sitting and it recorded twenty-five possible birds – a veritable sinfonia of rapturous twittering and tinselling.

coal tit collared dove wood pigeon song thrush brambling skylark
blue tit black cap wren linnet robin crow redpoll meadow pipit dunnock pheasant sparrow jackdaw chaffinch goldfinch
chiffchaff bullfinch nuthatch curlew siskin

Yesterday down by the river, watching the moon rise over the water, as the youngsters practised their rowing, I saw my first wild garlic and daffodils, blackthorn and cherry blossom. I woke up to a lovely email from a friend travelling in Japan with a photo of the first blossom in Ueno Park, Tokyo.

Make the most of it, they say – the trees, the plants, the birds – this is it. Whatever you thought was happening in your long hibernation, time now to turn to face the sunlight, let go and start unfurling, risk what this life is asking of you – know you are part of something much bigger.

Nothing to do but sense your sap rising, like bubbles in a glass of fizz. Gavin Ewart once wrote a poem with the title ‘The Lover Writes A One Word Poem’. It goes:

Yes.

You are that lover. You are that poem.

L

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