Symmetrical tribal heart motif

The gate has finally stopped squealing, so you can stop fretting about the cold reaching the seedlings. Pa's ironwork is hung again, the old horns back over the arch where he always said they belonged. Mr Crabtree from the forge brought the two curls down on Tuesday, black with a century of soot, and he says the smith who made them had a heart like a fiddlehead fern, always opening inward. I told him that was nonsense. Then I spent the afternoon scrubbing them with vinegar, found the heart underneath, and stopped arguing.

The garden has taken the frost badly. The espaliered pear went brown along one side, and the rhubarb under the north wall has sulked since October. But the lavender by the sundial came through, which I did not expect, and there is a single leaf of the old rose climbing the arch that I have been watching each morning like a suitor. Nobody sees me do it except the blackbird.

You asked whether I'd sold the house. I haven't. The solicitor wants a decision by Lady Day, and I have written three letters to him and torn up all of them. What I can say is that the gate swings the right way when I lean into it, and the iron spike at the bottom of the arch still points at the bed where Pa buried the tin of seed potatoes during the war, so I know where to dig if the rest of us go hungry again.

Come at Easter. Bring your boy. Tell him the horns are for keeping out foxes and the curls are for keeping out nothing at all, which is why they are the nicest part.

Your loving sister, Margaret