February 15th, Thursday
It has been a particularly lovely day today and directly after lunch we all set off walking, Miss H and the children to the woods, and Win and I across the fields to Seavington to call on Mrs Hole, a nice lady who we found at home. We did not know the way so just went rambling on, halfway there we met an old hedger at his work and asked the way of him, he gave some vague directions which we failed to follow, but found our way eventually. The more I ramble through this country the more fascinated I am by it.
February 16th
Win is at Hospital today and so I rode over to North Perrott to answer a call on the Dashwoods and found them out. It is a long way and I always seem to be going over there to answer calls, so many people have called and I never seem to get to the end of them.
February 17th, Saturday
February is an extraordinary month, a month of surprizes. Last week we were in the grip of the hardest weather we have known for years, and today it has been like April. Feeling the Spring in the air and in our bones we all set forth for the woods, and Oh! the loveliness of it all. The sun, the pale Spring sunlight that I love so much was streaming slantwise through the trees, casting flecky shadows eveyrwhere and glistening on the wet grey green trunks of beeches and the red rough stems of large firs. The larches shone bright gold against a very blue sky and all was very peaceful and remote. Two days before the children found one or two primroses out in bloom most wonderful to relate, and today all the earth smelt strong of coming Spring. How I do love it all, but alas, how incongruous it is in these sad and evil days.
February 19th, Monday
Yesterday, feeling a worm and no man I stayed in bed, wrote letters and read Macaulay’s Essays with keen interest and felt thoroughly ashamed of myself that never before had I realized how interesting they were.
Poggy sent me today two pamphlets on Food Economy in War Time – both most interesting and having read them very attentively my mind is now full of “Protein and Calories”, every mouth is now full of food economy and it is a complicated affair. I cant say that actual want is experienced among anyone I’ve met, still we are all “doing without” very many things we never thought about before the War. The big Loan has just closed and apparently it has been a great success. We personally have put all we could into it and have taken up a good deal of New Money which has got to be worked off somehow!