Surrey, April 22

The hawthorn on the hedge side that faces the sun is in bloom, the south wind carries a thin fragrance all the way up the lane; sweeter than the almost overpowering scent that will come when the flowers are fully ripe; just above the ditch is the first campion, milk-white, half-hidden by nettles that every morning are taller by their night growth; across in the field a scythe rips through the green rye, you learn how luscious this long grass is by the way a horse waiting for a load tugs to reach down, at first vainly, for the rope-reins are tied to the cart shaft, but after much struggle he is able to tear up whole heaps of the swathe. Then the fowls and ducks, hastening, find a feast of small live things that have come to life and grown in the bottom grass. Last of all, a robin, leaving a nest somewhere in the faggot-stack, alights undaunted at your feet, hops a little way, comes back, discovers an insect, seizes and shows it before flying as if to tell you where the morsel will go.

Country diary: the atmosphere in the hawthorn hedge is electric Read more

The yellow gorse lives in a pleasant hum of bees that float across from one to another bush, crawl up the budded brambles and drop to where a trailing spread of ground ivy has long been in flower. Farther down, a pair of swallows under the arching willows fly tirelessly up and down the narrow river. They almost touch the water – it seems, as they wing along, that theirs is a message to the flowing stream.