We lost track of time and found we had spent nearly two hours immersed in colour and scent and the comforting hum of bumble bees

muddied further when you buy a box of Scottish Bluebell matches (made in Sweden, please note), which has a spray of harebells decorating the lid.

In the early days of this column I got the most fearful rocket from a reader for suggesting that bluebells were Scottish. “I am aghast”, he wrote, “that someone in your position” – I’d only been in it a matter of months – “should consider bluebells in the same breath as harebells.”

I wrote back explaining it was what my Loanhead aunties called them. He was in no mood to be impressed by my aunties, but the experience was seared on my memory. With the passage of years, I can say now with confidence that the harebell has it. The definitive answer is surely in Mary McMurtrie’s description of their delicate blue bells hanging on threadlike stalks from a wiry stem. Is this not a metaphor for our natural resilience combined with delicacy and grace?

Day out at Crathes

It’s not been so easy taking days out here and there – as they say in Aberdeenshire. So when the Doyenne saw that Crathes Castle Gardens, near Banchory, had reopened, and as they are a long-time favourite, we reckoned it was time for a day out.

The 16th Century castle remains closed, but it provides the most stunning backdrop to the gardens. The four-acre walled gardens have been developed over 300 years and latterly were influenced by the Arts and Crafts movement of the 1920s. Established trees and shrubs and hedges add to the sense of permanence.

Everywhere is colour, which follows the seasons of the year.

We lost track of time and found we had spent nearly two hours immersed in colour and scent and the comforting hum of bumble bees.

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Picture: Angus Whitson.