The industrious buzz of bees tackling the dregs of cherry blossom was lawnmower-loud, accompanied by back off peeps from blackbirds nesting in the ivy.
My mother first planted those same bulbs (or their parents) in her garden, which is half a mile from here, in the 1970s. When she died a decade ago, I took them first to our old house and now to this property. I'd actually forgotten the last transfer: a scoop of both the bulbs and surrounding soil, a short car journey, then a hasty reinterment in a hole on this south-facing slope.