Springtime and Easter

I love Springtime and Easter. It is a time of hope and new life after the long winter months, as the daffodils push up through the earth and nod their bright yellow heads in the garden and at the roadsides and the primroses beneath them open revealing a pale yellow carpet. Country walks where the spring sun is almost beginning to add some warmth to the air and trees are bearing pussy willows and catkins. 

Horse chestnut trees are full of buds . As children we would collect them and call them sticky buds and take them home for our mum to put in a vase where we would watch the sticky buds open and the brilliant green horse chestnut leaves appear. I remember taking sticky buds to school for my teacher with daffodils and catkins cascading. Now as an adult I’m not sure sticky buds were the most attractive thing to have displayed in the house but mum would happily pop them in the kitchen windowsill thanking us.

As a child on the farm, Springtime would also mean lambs and fields being ploughed, cowslips in hedgerows and wild violets. We would go in search of frog spawn and once found, we would return again and again over the next few weeks to see if the tadpoles had appeared.

At Easter time the birds are already busy in the garden, popping in and out of the various bird boxes that I have hung here and there. Last year there was a feud over a box between the blue tits and the sparrows, ending in neither of them using the box to my disappointment.

Easter is a time when the families come together, a time of chocolate and excited children. And a house full of the smell of spice from freshly baked hot cross buns, and Easter biscuits.

Spring is one of my most favourite times of the year, where I suddenly find I have so much to do, cooking, tidying the garden and allotment, spring cleaning the house and preparing it to sow seeds for the season ahead. It’s a time of year when I start thinking about foraging and replenishing my stock of wild garlic in the freezer. It is a time where one day the garden looks quite barren and then the next the cherry tree blossom has burst open and buds are forming on hydrangeas and red shoots are appearing on the roses. All new life growing and preparing for the warmer season ahead and the beauty of the summer to come.

What does Easter mean to you?