The dandelion collector

Dense banks of thick-stemmed, bushy-headed dandelions are appearing – then quickly disappearing along the lane towards The Neighbours’ farmhouse. Their growth has been spurred on by this month’s heavy rain and short, but intense, bursts of sunshine. We had April’s weather in March, and we’ve got March’s weather in April; it’s been a topsy-turvy time.

As we put Trevor and number four pom-pom to bed, The Neighbour tells me the dandelions are being harvested by Bruno for his rabbits. He has cages of them, all kept in a barn.

Come spring Bruno gets on his bicycle. It has a wooden trailer and he takes it out through the lanes and along the paths in the fields, manouevering it past ditches and high hedges vivid with feisty splashes of primary colour. He fills the trailer to the brim with long, lush leaves and crisp-stalked flowers then pedals home.

He also has a motorised version. I’ve seem him astride it, helmet on, trailing dense, white smoke up the steep hill and past the local wells as he hunts for winter wood.

It goes considerably faster than his bicycle.

And The Neighbour and and I ponder whether it is also faster than his voiture sans permis – the immaculately kept little red car that sits in the yard with his army of cats. His pride and joy has been likened to a yoghurt pot with an engine. You hear it coming two kilometres before it arrives, whirring and cluttering like a loud sewing machine.

The vehicle is even picturesque – unless you happen to be stuck behind it.

I don’t suppose he will ever use it to collect dandelions and I hope it avoids the fate of the blue Citroen van abandoned in the orchard.

But something tells me its engine will pack in long before Bruno’s bicycle with trailer has served its purpose: his own chariot of gold traversing the wide fields under storm-blue April skies.