For weeks, the buds are small green globes on their spear-like stalks, as stubbornly sealed as tightly clenched fists. Then, one day, a flash of cerise catches your eye as you walk up the path – the hollyhocks are out and summer is finally in bloom.
The year is full of subtle special occasions like this, but they often pass without record. The day you spot an early snowdrop or hear the first cuckoo, the evening there’s still light in the sky on your way home from work, the date on which you pick your first ripe blackberry or notice a single golden leaf on next door’s cherry tree. The first frosty morning or the chilly Sunday when suddenly there are primroses poking through the stiff soil. These moments have happened, undisputedly, but it’s rarely easy, once a few months have passed, to be able to recall quite when it was or how it felt.
It’s not only the natural world that provides these fleeting markers of the year circling round, either. Other equally momentous but modest occasions might include the sunny afternoon you hear the first tinny chime of an ice-cream van or the November night when woodsmoke begins curling from a neighbour’s chimney.
There are no practical reasons for marking seasonal firsts on a calendar. In fact, part of their joy is the element of surprise. But making a brief note of them – even if it’s just a jotting in a diary – is a way of letting your appreciation of them fully sink in, an acknowledgment of the joy of being able to witness them again. In the process, you might recall precious moments with loved ones or set in context your own efforts, losses and celebrations.
Also, when you’ve noted them down, you’ll have a reference point for the following year. If the bitter weeks of next February seem to be stretching on forever, you can look back through your log and see that, at the same time last year, there were only two weeks to go until the ice on the pond finally melted, and a mere two months later the swifts had returned. And then it was summer and, after weeks of waiting, hollyhocks filled the garden with colour.