Easter Monday

I have dragged my laptop out into the garden, it is a beautifully blue-skied sunny day, the kind of Easter Monday you hope for but so rarely arrives. My houseplants are having a holiday on the patio in front of me, earlier I topped them up with compost and watered them thoroughly. They are jostled by unexpected breezes, a new reality for them. Inside the house my daughter is planning complicated baking, there are plans for afternoon tea. When I asked the children at work what happens at Easter, I was met with a chorus of “chocolate!”. We are a resolutely secular household, but the break from work and study is welcome. Easter weekend feels like a much more low pressure festival than Christmas, my son is back from university and we’re enjoying having him home. Good food has been eaten and I have performed the traditional ritual of visiting a garden centre and daydreaming in an aisle of seed packets, so much possibility and hope. In ALDI I bought a cheerful strip of bedding plants, jewel bright pansies in purples and yellows.

Yesterday I sat in a friend’s garden that backs on to a Victorian park, we drank tea and were surrounded by the wind in the mature trees, a comforting echo of the ocean in the city. We discussed the tension between the springy newness all around us, provoking spring cleaning and decluttering, but also my desire to say like Mole in the Wind in the Willows “hang spring cleaning” and go off in search of adventure. It’s hard to be patient and well-behaved all the time.

Adventures are relative though, and I think of my preschool companions walking through the woods last week in search of wild garlic. The world is much newer for them, they have the trick of awe and wonder. Being with them sometimes helps me see more clearly, and it’s also a reminder that paying attention can be a matter of life and death. First we learn to identify the heart-shaped leaves of Lords and Ladies (Arum maculatum) and the children learn that just a taste would make them sick. The fuller scientific explanation can wait until they are older, which is that all parts of the plant contain oxalate crystals which are very sharp and can penetrate the skin causing immense pain and irritation. In severe cases it can cause death, however the pain caused by ingestion makes it difficult to consume a life-threatening amount.

It is also worth saying that these types of foraging activities are only planned when the adults in the setting feel confident that the children are familiar with the standard rules of Forest School. Simple straightforward instructions such as “don’t put anything in your mouth” are repeated many times and have to be learnt before introducing anything more complicated. In fact, early spring sun-dappled days in the woods when the mud has dried up feel like a reward for making it through the tougher winter days, when even the most enthusiastic outdoor practitioner has to dig deep and mutter inwardly about resilience.

Risks considered, the children keep scanning the forest floor and eagerly point fingers and tug at my waterproof trousers, exclaiming excitedly. They have spotted a spread of wild garlic (Alium ursinum), sometimes called Ramsons. Some small buds but no flowers yet, in a few weeks this patch will be a constellation of white stars. The leaves are oval with a tapering point, not very similar after all to Lords and Ladies when you see them side by side, but the risky one has a nasty habit of growing in amongst Ramsons, meaning that an unwary forager can accidentally scoop up a stray leaf together with garlicky deliciousness. For this reason we teach the children to pick with care, one leaf at a time carefully scrutinised. We are also hoping that this helps them learn to only take exactly what is needed at one time, to respect the abundance of the natural world without taking it for granted. Tricky concepts for four year olds, and many adults have never learnt this.

After lunch we eat flatbreads made with the foraged wild garlic, cooked over a campfire by a colleague. With good humour and patient care she simultaneously keeps an eye on the small puffy rounds of dough and also reminds children about fire safety. Repetition and frequently songs are our tools here. “Wild bread!” remarks the boy next to me, nibbling appreciatively. Being here in a woodland clearing is an escape from the world, one worth recording.

The photo shows Honesty (Lunaria annua) spotted in my front garden this week, after I had thought it gone for good. It's an annual and I last remember it flowering in lockdown six years ago. But some seeds must have lurked in the soil and here it is again. I am reading a book group choice at the moment, Napoleon's Last Island by Thomas Keneally and have been listening to a series about Hildegard of Bingen on BBC Sounds. Feeling very grateful that I don't have to be walled up alive in a convent to have an intellectual life...