Spring Week at Dixon Hill: 4

Pussy willow always reminds me of the school nature table when I was five or six years old. It always seemed to be springtime on the nature table.

There would be tall stems of pussy willow and catkins; paint pots filled with fistfuls of snowdrops and garden-plucked daffodils; and tadpoles swimming in jam jars of murky water.

Stroking the velvet buds of the willow felt miraculous then.

It still does now.