For a good few weeks, half a miracle had been growing on the mantelpiece. It came from the side of the river, where a pussy willow had been trimmed back to clear the path. In a stack of branches on the ground, the shiny conker-coloured buds were fit to burst. We snapped off a couple of long twigs, took them home and stuck them in a water-filled vase.
Before the day was out, the first finger of fur was peeping out of its cracked shell. White with a greyish interior, it reminded me of our friend’s pet chinchilla. By the next morning, almost a hundred comfortably warm catkins on the twigs had sprung forth, a little ahead of their counterparts in the cold and windy wild. Visitors to the house were all too willing to touch their softness.
Though steeped in water, the natural wonders dried up. Just two out of all those hairy buds went on to thrust out yellow-tipped male flowers. In centrally heated celibacy, without insects buzzing around the chimney breast to pollinate them, the stamens dropped their thin scatter of pollen on the tiles below, then began to shrivel.
Down by the river, catkins on the willow developed into a riot of yellowy-green toilet brushes, others kept their anthers bunched up like corn on the cob. I bent over and inhaled lemon-fresh scent. And where I sniffed, a bee sucked too, a queen bumblebee drifting around my head. The pollen baskets on her back legs were empty, for she had only herself to feed, and ovaries to grow.
A week later, the catkins smelt like glue. Two honeybees didn’t seem to mind the resinous odour, nuzzling into the plant’s male parts with pollen-dusted heads. Their shopping bags were full too – each bore honeyed lumps on its back legs almost as big as its head. Dozens of flies milled around to share in the sweetness; midges with feathery antennae clambering through the stamen stalks as if they were tree trunks; a yellow dung fly taking a nectar break from less salubrious fare.
The pussy willow will still be indoors for Easter, without any development of roots or shoots. A marked contrast to its rooted and life-giving cousins outside.
