averilburystedmunds: Sights of the Season

Forsythia in the Abbey
Gardens today 21/03

Thomas Nashe 1567-1601

Thomas Nashe, the 16th century British poet sang of Spring:

The fields breathe sweet, the daisies kiss our feet/Young lovers meet, old wives a-sunning sit.

His song begins to invoke a feeling of Spring. Today is March 20^th, the first day of Spring and as I stroll through the Abbey Gardens I keep noticing tiny hints of Spring emerging with all that promise of sunshine and longer days; of re-birth as birds return and insects emerge; of vernal promise as plants throw out buds, green shoots and leaves like tiny arrows to the sky. As Swinburne remarks somewhere, “blossom by blossom the Spring begins.” My rhododendron of the piebald leaves is starting to flaunt its pink beauty in buds uncurling as I silently congratulate myself on smuggling it back to England, the one visible survivor from my large Bruggean terrace whose many much-loved plants had to be given away a year ago.

A standard Ilex and a pretty Photinia
Serratifolia.

Snowdrops in February in the
Abbey Gardens

I have recently walked round my large terrace really noticing what has survived the winter and the answer is, quite a lot. There are flowers, young shoots, and other buds a-bursting to my delight and yesterday’s Mother’s Day gave me and my terraces a shot in the arm…. Or perhaps one might say, a plant in a pot. My children here [with the help and support of my daughter in California] paid for me to choose several plants from a local nursery and also, by happenstance, I included a large pot for the ever-growing pink Bruggean rhododendron. Never was there a more satisfying and frankly indulgent Mother’s Day morning as yesterday’s! And the pleasure of planting is still to come with the weather and the light enabling me to linger on my terrace, work a little perhaps and resume the pleasant habit quite soon of drinking morning coffee after my early morning walk, AND eating lunch, all outside. All as a soft breeze touches the cheek and birds sing. Simple pleasures for sure, but to be counted among those everyday
experiences which add lustre to the soul and warmth to well-being. So, Spring in the air

My Bruggean rhododendron now on the small terrace in Bury.

signifies to me, a warmer, kinder, greener and more receptive season ahead when I shall be able to “a-sunning sit.”

Ellis Peters puts a familiar feeling, beautifully: “Every Spring is the only Spring, a perpetual astonishment.”
Ellis Peters alias Edith Pargeter who wrote, among others,
the Brother Cadfael murder mysteries.

Writing this blog has triggered memories of Springs past. Particularly when my family lived, with my mother, in Waingroves Hall in Derbyshire, my Spring Bank holiday week always seemed to ignite in me a burst of cleaning activity. To my mother’s great approval, I used to gradually work my way through the blankets from the beds for a family of six! Each day would see several blankets [these were pre-duvet days] blowing in the breeze as the sun shone, apparently endlessly in memory. The feelings of annual accomplishment were always as expected, and always applauded. It was never a chore, but a kind of busy Spring satisfaction which was hugely gratifying! Oddly enough, any Spring cleaning seems to bring a promise of all-round regeneration as if cleaning the windows to let the sun pierce through the opaque scruffiness of winter windows, somehow also confers on the person, refreshment and new optimism. I notice in myself a sudden tendency, these early Spring days, to think about, plan for, short but dazzling 'getaways' which I had told myself were physically impossible for me now.