There has been some work going on in the garden at the Hope. After Christmas the place was a wreck. As always we had shoved a boat into the pond and hauled mistletoe to the masthead. Various junior members of the household snuck into the small collection of crab apple trees (Malus transitoria and M. mutabilii) and strung them with fairy lights, the little cautions. Then we trudged round on Twelfth Night and hauled it all down, and waded off through the snowdrops to the south of France, because livingin the Welsh Marches in February is like living in a deep-freeze with a mud floor and faulty lights. And when we got back in March, it was time for the wraps to come off.
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