Ornate letter A with flourishes

The thaw hasn't reached the top field yet, and Dad has stopped pretending he minds. I found Gran's old sampling box under the stairs while hunting for the good twine. You'll remember the big capital A she inked across the front of the seed ledger, the one with curls spilling off its legs like bindweed. I had forgotten how she used the fine nib for the dots, pressing each one in a ring so the inside of the letter looked like frost on a gate.

I sat on the cold step with it for an hour. The ledger says 1952 at the top, and under that, in her small upright hand, a list of what went into the ground that spring: barley, two rows of beans, a row of potatoes she called the difficult ones. Every entry beginning with A got a flourish. Apples, Autumn, Ashwood. The leaves at the base of her letter are the same ones that grow wild along the bottom hedge, which she always said were the only things on the farm that never needed asking twice.

I've decided to do the same in the lambing book. Ruth says it looks daft, but Ruth has never had to explain a ewe's temper to the vet in January. So I'm drawing the letter first, on the back of an old feed invoice, and the dots are taking forever.

Come up when the roads clear. Bring your good pen and tell me if the stroke at the top is wrong. I can't see it any more. I've been looking at it too long.

Love, Nell