A beautiful green carpet, starred with white, has popped up on the woodland floor under the hazels - the wood anemones are in bloom. I think they are my favourite spring flowers, bright and delicate with yellow centres and finely-cut leaves. Wood anemones are sun-seekers, the white petals opening wide to embrace the sunshine and closing again when the sun goes in.
These lovely flowers are a sign of ancient woodland and suggest that our small wood may be a fragment of a much larger old forest. I like that idea. When we were looking for land to buy for Brigit's Garden I walked through this wood for the first time and felt a deep sense of rightness about it, that this was the place. We were very lucky to find land that was at least partly 'unimproved', where a small wood like this had been left standing.
Every time I take the narrow path among the ash, hazel and birch trees I find myself re-living that sense of rightness. This is a place to slow down and relax, surrounded by moss and lichen, smooth bark and rough bark, old stones, tall trees and tiny new ones. And, for a few precious weeks in April, stars around my feet.
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