Still and all

The primroses have melted away, replaced by thick carpets of yellow cowslips standing erect against the greensward. This is the natural order of things, the tough early flowers giving way to the less hardy ones as the earth warms up and the air softens above it. But elsewhere there is confusion as Nature seems to have lost control of spring. Today has been typical of recent events: it began sunny but chilly, that biting northerly wind changing direction a few times but its provenance in the Arctic never in doubt. By lunchtime I was in shirtsleeves working in the garden, though when the sun disappeared behind a cloud it felt like winter and everything went back on again. We drove to the garden centre and had to find shade when it got too hot, but on the way home a sudden cloudburst made everything gloomy. Back home again the wind dropped completely and the sun glowed benignly in a clear sky. A good time for our evening walk then. But we quickly found ourselves in a seasonal nomansland as a few fat drops of rain fell and, looking around, I saw that the sky was suddenly, shockingly blue black, the colour of that Quink ink you had to buy when they had run out of royal blue. The sun still shone on us the whole way round our route as the rain fell, though now a double rainbow had shot a curved arc against the darkness. Primitive tribes must have wondered if the world was ending when these freak conditions occurred. I sometimes ha me doots too. But we plodded on, Hugo unusually frisky as every few yards yielded up the scent of hare and he had to stop and sniff, and then do a long stare into the distance. They are there alright, we've seen them bobbing about in the wheat field, scurrying along the deep tracks left by the tractor. Oh but he'd like to give chase, but even worse than him disappearing over the horizon is the thought of a hare hunted to heart-bursting exhaustion and then being grabbed by that long sharp jaw. No, he has to stay on a lead around here. But yesterday we went again to the beach with his friend Stella, and he showed off his speed and agility to the more mundane dogs. Sorry, that's not meant to be a value judgement on the others: he just looks magnificent in full flight.