Enjoying whites of spring

I never thought it would be so uplifting to see the land so white.

The brrrrrr and grrrrrrr winter sank its fangs deep a third time and we thought, that's it, bang goes the almond blossom.

But no: Old Ma Nature merely held her breath a beat longer. This countless carpet of wild shepherd's purse in a crowning grove, not on the farm but just a hop away, is what all hearts need right now. It holds the eye like the bunch of yellow star-burst mimosa exploding from a vase in the middle of our kitchen table.

Such awakening turns talk from besiegement to bounty, to planting sunflower seeds and potatoes, to moving garden chairs to the sun-trap, breeze-free end wall of the farmhouse.

A mere five days earlier, snow had closed schools and I was carting my antique skis up the land in search of sufficient slope. Joe had been burrowing in the barn for the sledge and had somehow spied the blue Salomon bag stacked against the wall among some old lengths of wood-stove chimney pipe.

The old ski boot case was traced and dusted down, too, but I hesitated. Something unsavoury had obviously chewed an entrance in one corner. Among the less charming moments of this life was the time Maggie found a plump rat that had passed away in her wellie.

I put on my thickest work gloves and delved, and there was something nestling in the foam lining of one boot – two very dated ski hats that smelled of... well... the Seventies.

The snow barely lasted the day, but there was time enough for first Joe and then Ella to swish down the hill before comically and inconsequentially colliding with tree prunings and broken cane. There was neither time nor inclination to impart the art of turning and by the end we had worn winter away.

Would that we could so easily erase the ambitions of the mayor of a village about 15 kilometres from Mother's Garden.

If you look south-west on a cloudless day you can see the distant steam plume of Asco nuclear power station on the bank on the mighty River Ebre. Spain's socialist government has asked villages and towns nationwide if any would like to host Spain's nuclear waste dump – blood-drainingly called a cemeteri – and the mayor and council at Asco have put their hands up.

The village is already home to the power station and so the local council is well aware of the millions in subsidies that would flutter down from the sky. A few other communities across the country have also volunteered, and now it's a case of who can shout the loudest, against. I'm not a political animal but along with several thousand other local residents I joined a protest march because I wanted to get something off my chest.

Everyone in favour, including the governments that have built the seemingly unstoppable global economic engine that belches toxins and squirrels consequences, makes a good case for nuclear power. Read the websites.

And do you know what? It does make a whole lot of sense in the here and now, with electrical demand so high. It will take time for truly "clean" energy to fill the void. You want to believe them. Most of the world trusts them.

But (and this is what eats at me) nothing is constant. Reflect for a while on the calamitous instability of the last 100 years. Anyone who predicts that neither human madness nor natural disaster will pose a risk in the future when our successors are living with our nuclear legacy, has switched off his or her conscience. Our innovative, hungry, wasteful race has littered every room in history and we are now mortgaging the future.

So we marched in protest. Then we came home to fly a kite made out of an old newspaper, glued with left-over rice to a frame of split and bent cane.

Our Nepalese Gurkha friend Pusker has a myriad of tales from his upbringing in Darjeeling – from coming face to face with a tiger, riding the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, spiriting away village hens for forest feasts, to making, flying and running kites.

The prototype kite comprised an old potting compost sack, sticky tape and some cord from a bought kite (that never worked). It climbed to an impressive 100ft, but Pusker wasn't remotely satisfied. He boiled rice, purloined a newspaper, was gifted a fat reel of strong, light cotton by Maggie and proceeded to make three authentic childhood masterpieces. Why three? Because you can then fight the kites until a cord breaks, came the reply with the smile of boy back in the lee of Mount Kanchanjangha in the Himalayas. When he launched the newspaper kite, the wind was strong. The line broke at about 500ft, but not before two eagles and a peregrine had swirled around it.

Pusker is a great distance from his dear mum and all things familiar, yet he beams mellowly. He is just waiting now for the rubber stamp of his residency and is happy to garden, cook, offer ayurvedic massages and old wisdom. We talk of the day he will guide us on a journey to Darjeeling and Nepal, to meet this mum and see the settings of the stories we are encouraging him to write down.

Much as it pains me to mention the word, with contrition I must return to the thorny topic of algebra. I suggested in my last chronicle that it should be optional and secondary to music in schools. Cor, that touched a nerve. A very good friend who happens to be the head of mathematics at an English high school, found the sum of my reasoning didn't square with the truth, and poetically put me in my place.

The Mother's Garden website is about to move on up a gear, with photographs, blog, online shop and a lot more. It should be there by the time you read this, so dip in and say hello. www.mothersgarden.org

Martin's novel Count The Petals Of The Moon Daisy is published by Pegasus (ISBN 9781903490297).

YP MAG 10/4/10