The difference a week makes.

10 days ago the whole place was cold and windswept, with the occasional well-wrapped passer-by dropping in, mostly for a hot drink and shelter. But May has arrived, the temperature has climbed past my t-shirt threshold of 16C (61F) and the place has gone mental. OK, it was our NGS day on Sunday so we expected a crowd (I think our final tally will be about £1,000 raised), but the whole weekend has been just unbelievably busy, despite the rain. Part of the meadow has had to double as a car park, the meadow and bluebell paths are in need of a rest after heavy weekend use and we are into twice daily dishwasher rounds with tea-room mugs (funny the things you use as rough and ready measures!). After April’s chilly and quiet start, it is reassuring and timely.

Our NGS visitors were very complimentary about the garden – and it is lovely, though it is early in the season for a herbaceous perennial garden – but the bluebell woods ares breathtaking. The woods are a fine mixture of hornbeam, beech, hazel and elm in the main. The elms tend to die at the 10 year mark from dutch elm disease and send up new suckers, so the understory is mostly young elm. There are no evergreens in the old part of the woods and the sharp, fresh green of the new canopy underlain with a carpet of bluebells is, well, beyond my capacity for language. Nature outshines nuture, as ever.

This is known as ‘harping’ – the tree falls, still rooted and new branches are thrown up vertically. This hornbeam is a beautiful example.

The beech is the finest tree in the woods. It has a large cavity, with resident bracket fungus, and is in its tertiary stage of life, but I’m optimistic it will outlive me.

And finally for today, this charismatic hornbeam tree with its distinctive gnarls and indentations. Surely hornbeam was the inspiration for the trees in Lord of the Rings.