Ear pressed to the pale bark, I listen. It’s March, the month when the sap of the silver birch rises. “You can hear it,” says Lucia as I close my eyes to concentrate. “It’s a gurgling, the tree’s lifeblood.”
Sadly, I hear nothing apart from a low traffic hum and Lucia rummaging in her basket. She produces a bottle of birch sap tonic that she’s made earlier. I take a sip. Refreshing. “Good with vodka,” Lucia notes.
