St Dominic, Tamar Valley: As spring progresses, the luminous beech foliage and thick cherry blossom have gone, and I find a grass snake sunning itself

Rain in early May has helped alleviate the dearth of April showers. Along narrow lanes, the drifts of bluebells, interspersed with cow parsley, campions and seeding stitchwort, are already overwhelmed by ferns. The succession of buckler, lady, hart’s-tongue, male, scaly male and soft shield – the latest to unfurl from its crozier-like fronds – will soon be topped by rampant bracken, now entwined in bryony.

Swags of hawthorn blossom overhang neglected uncut hedgerows, and landmark clumps of beech have lost that initial pellucidity of luminous foliage. Like linear stunted woods, the battered, regularly shorn deciduous growth on hedgebanks sprouts a diversity of greenery.

St Dominic, Tamar Valley: Our wooded enclave is alive again with bursting magnolia and questing bumblebees, while primroses amass on the lanes

Brilliant yellow daffodils and the pale foam of the first fruit tree blossom (cherry plum or myrobalan) draw attention from the lichens and mosses that have thrived in winter’s rain and mild gloom.

At home, in this steep orchard and encroaching woodland, the ground was used as a market garden until the 1950s. Hardy, old fashioned narcissi from those days still flower, many in their original rows and plots. Earliest to emerge are the yellows of double Van Sion (known locally as the Lent lily), Henry Irving with dainty trumpets on long stems, Princep, Helios and Carlton, already fading and past their best, succeeded by Victoria. A woodpecker has drummed for weeks and particularly cheering is the sound of a chiffchaff, returned to this partially wooded enclave.