MARCH

March feels, more than most, like a door opening wide. After the stillness of January and the subtle thaw of February, this is the month when the world begins to lean outward again. A breath of fresh air moving through rooms long closed.

The days lengthen by noticeable degrees. Light begins to outstay its welcome, lingering later into afternoon walks and early evening chores. There is a softness to the air, a hint that frost will no longer rule the dawn. And yet winter is not gone; its breath still lingers in empty hedgerows and the chill that clings to north-facing walls.

The season turns

In older calendars, March has long been understood as a threshold. A time of becoming rather than being. It sits between the return of light and the first flush of green. In folklore, this month was shaped by stories of wind spirits and earth forces that, having held winter in sway, were now coaxed toward rest by sun and soil alike.

Proverbs sprang up around this shifting time, teaching patience: “March winds and April showers bring forth May flowers,” the rhyme goes, a reminder that this month’s tempests are part of what makes growth possible. When the wind bites, it is still a wind of transition, not of hard winter. The world seems to breathe with two rhythms at once.

The land itself murmurs hints of spring. Blackthorn, white and early, blossoms along hedgerows, its flowers appearing before leaf or bird call. Snowdrops, first signs of winter’s slackening, retreat as crocus and daffodil take shape in sheltered corners, their colours held close until the sun orders them wider. Beneath the surface, bulbs store warmth in tight coils, waiting for the day when it is safe to unspool.

On fields across the Notswolds, lambs begin to appear, unsteady of step, curious of sound, their bleats the first real chorus of the year. To witness these animals on tentative legs is to understand March’s promise: not exuberance, but emergence.

A month for listening

This is a time for attentive noticing. Dawn light arrives earlier and settles gently into mid morning, losing the hard edge of winter. The soil begins to warm, just enough to take a spade, though it still offers resistance. Birds sing with greater certainty than they did only weeks ago, their calls less tentative, more assured.

In March, tasks feel provisional: tools are cleaned and tested; gardens are planned and replanned; paths are cleared, not yet fully green but no longer forbidding. There is a will to movement here, but it is tempered by the memory of frost.

March, in this place, is less a season arrived than a season approaching. It asks that we pay attention, that we walk slowly, that we make space for the gradual unravelling of winter’s hold. Noticing — that is the work of this month. And what it reveals, as light wins its long, daily argument with dark, is a promise not of quick change, but of change that arrives quietly, rooted in place.