I’ve been planning to write a piece about the coming of Spring for the last month, thinking about it in my head, but never getting round to it. The problem, is that it’s extremely time sensitive. The idea being to talk about the early arrivals, those green shoots of joy, and who says ‘hello’ first.
It’s mid March, still cold, the beastly wind, irritates me, when I know that warmth is nearby, but as I wrote last year, this is the problem with March, you feel like you are almost there, but then sometime you think it’s really still winter!!
But it’s the usual buds that come out first, literally and metaphorically. Snowdrops are first to grace the coming season, but not far behind the spikes of daffodils, are pushing their way up through the ground. Even as early as February the yellow trumpet graces our fields, down below the Nap in particular, so much so that the fields of Holland would doff their caps! It’s then a race between a number of equally charming friends, the primrose, carpeting the lane up to the farm, with the occasional crocus doing its best to assert its independence amongst the cohorts of prims. There seems a lull then. Nothing to note for a few weeks, but for me, it’s the arrival of the celandine, a yellow flower as bright as a butter cup in the road verges, that really makes you think, ‘No, we’re here now, we’re off, Spring is truly well on the way’
I will never forget the celandine, a comment almost as pompous as one of Uncle Monty’s in Withnail and I. “ I find the carrot, infinitely more beautiful than the rose’
I digress, celandine, yep, I remember this one, because I have a vivid memory of walking up a steep hill from Loe Beach up to Feock in Cornwall, with my Mother and her commenting on the arrival of the celandine. It was joyous moment against a backdrop of such sadness as my poor Grandma, lay in hospital in Truro after a dreadful stroke, that she would never really recover from.
She would have liked this post. She had a delightful garden full of an amazing array of un-pronounceable plants. Grandma loved her garden.
And back in the room….soon after the celandine, you notice, the hawthorn in hedges along sheltered combes and valleys, the elderberry, and now, the wonder of wild garlic, no flowers yet, but the abundance of thick green sheen leaves, in shaded dappled damp verges. What a treat, Pesto with walnuts here we come.
It’s all good, and I haven’t even mentioned the bird song, raucous, even now, but it’s such a familiar sound, that it’s easy to not even notice it. Like living next to a busy road, the mind soon blanks it out, such is its ubiquity. But what wonderous ubiquity it is. The birds not the traffic.
Tomorrow morning, I shall go out, sit on the wall by the farmhouse and listen. Just listen.
Marvellous. Writing is good for the soul, and on a day, reflective of the past year, time to remind ourselves of how lucky we are to enjoy such beauty.
