Morning scattered a glitter of dew around white violets in a hedge bank. The flowers seemed even more vibrant for being imperfect. Just as a Zen potter might chip an otherwise perfect vase, so a slug had bitten through clear white petals of the violet, leaving holes.
Natural beauty lies in the unexpected relationships between things. On a day trip to Dymock in Gloucestershire to see wild daffodils, I came back understanding that the slight differences and imperfections of each individual flower amounted to the perfect beauty of its kind.
On that day, such strong sunlight lit the green fuse in the hedge that it was in leaf when I returned. The violets, lesser celandines and wood anemones were now part of a vivid growing line which drew in the singing dunnocks and yellowhammers, the butterflies and bees, the grass snake and the slugs and dewdrops too.
Over the hedge, the tups were chomping mangelwurzels from an iron tub by the kissing gate. With a smouldering disdain which could quickly turn to bloody-mindedness, the rams kept their composure, even though the odd knobbly bits on their foreheads were all that remained of horns and pride.
The hedge led me along in the way that hedges do to places where people changed direction and abandoned them or grubbed them up. Where a hedge became a wood there was a gap into an old rollicking hazel stand. Just inside was a big plastic bucket and, poking out of it, the business end of a spade with black tape where the handle had snapped off, an ancient tenon saw, an oil can and several big brown bottles. It looked more like art than fly-tipping.
When the clocks went forward the weather went back, to cold and grey. The last few days were like a memory, strangely and beautifully damaged.