Each year, at Christmas or New Year, or mostly those quiet days in between the two festivals, I have a custom of giving a small plant and a card to the neighbours that share a drive with me.
It started because I am never organised enough to arrange Christmas cards (although I buy them every year from
the charity I like to support at this time of year) or neighbourly gatherings for mince pies and drinks. Somehow it was easier when my foster daughter was here, but since then, everything has drifted.
So I would visit one of the garden centres and buy small pots of spring flowers, usually miniature daffodils or hyacinths with jewel-like hues, and leave them with a card at each neighbour's back door. One year, I was ahead of myself and bought Christmas cacti in full bloom instead, but it's risky buying pot plants with a life longer than a few weeks - you bring an obligation into someone's life and you never know if the blooms will clash with their decor.
Spring bulbs, though, they are simply a joy! Beautiful bright colours, an antidote to England's relentless drab skies, bright sturdy leaves thrusting up so purposefully against the cold temperatures. They make everyone happy and they only have to keep them alive long enough to enjoy the boost and then they can be left to their own devices outside, free of guilt.
This year I was even later than usual (it's March). The winter festivals passed me by, half-term was taken up with other things, but last Saturday the sun shone and what a difference it made. I had some errands to run on Monday and, at one of my stops, I found these miniature daffodils, just coming into bloom.
They needed a few days nurturing in my back porch, well watered - I think they've all grown an inch. I remembered these little cards which I bought from
Persephone Books, lately of Bloomsbury but now based in Bath (of course, where else would you go from Bloomsbury)?
I've had them years, they were a pre-pandemic purchase. Originally, they were to give each of the cousins in the next generation with a small gift of crypto inside. I decided to maintain stewardship of the crypto until it's a more spectacular gift and worth the faff of opening an account.
So the little cards were redundant, resting quietly in a box in the office drawers, waiting their turn, until today when I remembered them and thought, just what I need.
Luckily, it is still sunny and bright today, with a temperature of 16 degrees Celsius, and I shall enjoy pottering up the drive, plant pots and cards in hand, practicing for when I am an old lady and make jam and crumbles from my own blackberries and wander about giving them to people whether they need them or not.
Interestingly there is a piece of land which provides access to the drive and, as the first house, I have ownership of it. I smiled when I read the deeds because, although I own it, I can do nothing with it and must allow free passage for people and carriages, burdened and unburdened.
I'm saving the benefit of it for when I grow old and can
wear purple and a red hat that doesn't go, and doesn't suit me, and imagine standing outside with my walking frame, shaking my fist at people and carriages as they pass, burdened and unburdened.
That will be after the days when I have a little stall outside the garage selling seedlings and tomatoes and jams and the school children come rushing down the drive trailing their mums and dads after them, anxious to get the raspberry buns before they sell out.
What a life I shall have, I might even plant my own Spring flowers in the Autumn.
