Another Country Diary #23
With rising, growing light.
10/4
The oaks are coming into leaf in the lanes. The younger oaks are already showing their leaves, small, light green, unfurling. The older oaks, some of them veterans, are still in bud, but their buds look full and swollen, ready to burst. We wonder why this is. Could it be that the younger oaks come from a different seed stock, and are genetically predisposed to come into leaf slightly earlier? Or do the older trees, like older living things more generally, slow down with age? Our walk is late, so we don’t go far, but turn back along the lanes, retracing our steps. There are blue tits moving between the crowns of the oaks. In the corner of the triangular field and small movement of brown against the hedgerow reveals the shape of a muntjac grazing.
11/4
I spend the day on a deserted campus, on call for an open day, but I …