So if I asked you about soil, you’d hand me the whole shelf — every field guide, every county survey. Loam, you could recite it in your sleep. Grain size, drainage, the argument about tillage, the pH tables, the lot. But I’ll bet you can’t tell me what a hedgerow smells like at five in the morning in late March. You’ve never actually knelt in one and felt the cold come up through your knees. If I ask you about orchards you’d give me a reading list of your favourites. You may have even pruned a tree or two. But you can’t tell me what it feels like to lose a whole row to frost in one night and go back out the next morning anyway. You’re a quick study. And I’d ask you about weather, you’d probably throw an almanac at me, right? There is no wind like the one that comes off a cut field in November, and no book has ever got it down. I’d ask you about neighbours, you’d tell me the whole parish register and not one of their names. I’d ask you what you planted last spring and you’d go quiet for a while.