At the bottom of the orchard

I hadn't walked around the orchard for ages. It's good on many levels that I've been fitting in a lot more walks this year, but I've been aware that after three years of mostly photographing my immediate surroundings, just going for regular local walks is leaving me less attentive to the tiny, daily changes in the garden and orchard. It was beautiful there today: some of the small fruit trees are already white with blossom, the quince is covered with buds, and the willow thicket is greening fast. There is still some blossom on the huge, old cherry plums which dominate the centre of the orchard, and the old, gnarled elders are sprouting new growth: in a month I will be gathering flowers for cordial. 

I did a few more gardening jobs - pot washing, preparing trays for sowing, and starting to remove some netting which was left over the last of the brassicas all winter and is now horribly entangled with the grass which has grown through it. Later I took J out to see the lambs: a large posse of them were charging around, backwards and forwards along the field, prefacing each run in a new direction with a few hops and skips. They were very entertaining,