Easter time

Tilly and I have had a couple of lovely, quiet Easter walks this weekend.  Easter holds wonderful memories for me, of big family gatherings at home, when I was very young.  My aunt and uncle would come down from Old Windsor, with lots of chocolate - beautiful Easter eggs decorated with sugar primroses and pastel coloured flowers, and boxes of Lindt chocolate bunnies and kittens.  We would go for walks along the Basingstoke Canal, near Dogmersfield, and pick great big posies of primroses, and make a green collar with the leaves.  For a lover of wild flowers and pretty things, Easter has always been one of my favourite times of the year.  I used to enjoy the Easter Sunday morning service too.  The hymns, 'There is a green hill far away' and the triumphal sound of 'Jesus Christ has risen today'.  I remember it all vividly, and fondly. 

This weekend, our Saturday walk took us past small drifts of wild daffodils, 

and I spied someone's front door, ringed round with beech husks.  The skylarks were singing away, high above.

We always have a couple of boiled eggs for breakfast on Sunday, but it was the two larger eggs lurking behind the real thing that really held my attention on Easter Sunday!  By mid-morning the sun was shining brightly, so the decision was made.  Lunch would be served outside.  We all sat round in wonderful sunshine, enjoying a delicious meal of lamb roasted on the barbecue spit, and then some yummy puddings.  It was all very civilised, and enjoyable, and a treat to spend time outside again, without freezing our socks off!

Easter Monday morning, and the day dawned with a mist drifting through the wood and across the fields.  Tilly and I went out quite early.  We saw all the usual culprits - deer, hares,   moving through the landscape to the soundtrack of greylag geese, curlew and lapwing.  And skimming over the farmland soil, the first swifts.