Jane’s Journal

We didn't buy a house . . .

11 years ago we came to view Sunnyside.

We were fleeing from a house bedeviled with boundary disputes which had come to feel unsafe.

We were looking for somewhere to settle with land and possibilities. We were dreaming of an idyll.

We spent about 20 minutes in the house - a 1980s bungalow with tiny rooms and aluminium windows - which was just about as far from our dream house as it was possible to be.

Then we spent almost 2 hours in the bluebell wood beneath the house, walking down towards the Altquhir burn which runs through the bottom of the garden.

We didn't buy a house that day, we bought a wood of shimmering blue.

Then it all slipped away.

A couple of years ago several months of heavy rain turned the fields behind the house into a slurry like mix and one stormy night they slipped. The fields, with about 40 trees clinging on, tumbled down into the raging river and were swept away. The bluebells were covered with a couple of feet of wet clay.

Last year they struggled, we couldn't get down to the river as the ground was like quicksand underfoot, but we could see that there were not many bluebells. I cried.

But this year they have returned - the wood may have be half the size but the bluebells are back carpeting everything in a shimmering haze.

Alder seedlings are sprouting - within my lifetime it will all be back, a multi layed natural wood.

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