Rites of Spring

 We knew it had to happen

eventually.

Being a careful sort of gardener,

I won’t risk calling these days ‘spring days’,

but the lenten roses tell me that winter must be over.

Cutting back to the ground the previous year’s leaves reveals the flowers.

They come in many varieties;

my favourites are the pure white and deep purple ones.

I’m debating whether I should be good and lay off the chocolates for lent. Today is Ash Wednesday, the day when every child at school went to the morning’s service to receive a smudge across her forehead - yes, it was a Catholic girls’ school - and promised to be good for lent.

Is this a Fast, to keep the Larder lean and clean
from fat of veals and sheep?

Is it to quit the dish of flesh, yet still to fill
the platter high with fish?

No, ’tis a Fast to dole thy sheaf of wheat and meat
unto the hungry soul

It is to fast from strife, from old debate and hate
to circumcise thy life.

So said Herrick’s Noble Numbers in 1647

I suppose it is a lot easier to be good in spring

when all nature reawakens.

It’s the lack of light which forces me to eat lots of chocolate in winter.

 When I bent down 

I could see and hear a whole swarm of bees in the crocuses.

Where did they all come from so suddenly?

Millie is getting impatient, she’d already

run ahead down the drive but came back

to see what had happened to me.

“Come on, mum.

Are you going to waste this whole gorgeous morning on taking silly flower pictures

or are you taking me for a walk?

And as for taking pictures of laundry blowing in the wind,

you must be as mad as a

Mad March Hare."

“No, Millie, just happy.”

(It’s the first time this year I’ve hung laundry out to dry.

There’s nothing like it.)