I see blossom in January – and feel a sickening swell of solastalgia | Nell Frizzell

On a walk through a nature reserve I felt dread at the pink flowers on a bone-grey tree, grief-stricken right down to my roots

There is a particular queasy disquiet that comes from looking at blossom in January. Or daffodils just weeks after Christmas. At seeing catkins dangling from trees that are still bathed in dark from about 4.30pm. It is an uncanny sense that something here isn't right. I get it, too, in August, when the blackberries have already ripened into dust, before the new school term starts. Or when I hear birdsong under a yellow streetlamp.

Perhaps this is just the outdoors equivalent of moaning about Easter eggs being in the shops in January. As in, it happens every year but we are somehow shocked anew each time. Maybe daffodils have always pushed up their spears as students fill in their Ucas applications. Maybe there have always been blackberries in July. Maybe it's just my memory playing tricks on me.

Nell Frizzell is the author of Holding the Baby: Milk, Sweat and Tears from the Frontline of Motherhood