Spring seems really he I heard two cuckoos trading calls across the
field this morning. Such a pretty sound with the drip from the trees.

Lawn mowing started yesterday, today its pick-up-sticks under the limes
and birches before cutting there.

Trees are starting to leaf, though most of my maples are still wound
tight. An early riser is the sycamore 'Corstorphinense', just pushing
its lovely yellow, a graft from a tree apparently still growing in
the zoo at Corstorphine near Edinburgh. The "Haunted Maple" is
apparently still visited by the ghost of Lord Forrester, murdered
with his own sword under the tree by his sister-in-law on
August 26, 1679 on what was then the grounds of Sir Dick Lauder.
The Haunted Maple wakes before the local Norman sycamores.

-E