Snow Blossom

Have you noticed that since the Spring Equinox on 21st March that the light has changed? Even though the days are only lengthening minute by minute each day, there is somehow an uplifting vibrancy outside. On Tuesday Millie and I went for a long walk through the Ecological Park. It was all primroses, in that subtle baby-clothes yellow, nestling in the verdant freshness. In the orchard the pink buds of apple blossom sung out with warmth while the catkins fluttered like celebratory bunting. The air was filled with that smell of the first cutting of grass of the season. It’s freshness brought a spring to our steps too. Millie bounced her way along, joyfully nudging into the new season, with her lighter coat fluttering in the warm breeze like a chiffon skirt, relieved to have now grown out of her après-ski duvet.

As the park opened out it was as if we had accidentally fallen into the Elysian fields of youth. A group of girls were skipping, two turning the rope and the third in the middle jumping high to her rhyme and rhythm. Another group were idling on the grass, feeling its new found nurturing, nonchalantly picking daisies which have suddenly appeared all over the lawn as if they had been strewn from some milkmaid’s basket. Some boys were playing badminton while others were playing football. The content calmness was in such contrast to the hoodie’d malice with which young teenagers are usually tarnished round here. Millie so wanted to go and join in with them, and I wondered if I still remember the chants to skip to. Onward. When we got to the dock, the ripples on the ink-black water, I swear just looked warmer. Or maybe they were just reflecting the burnished gold of the long forgotten sun. Throughout the winter one of the main attractions of the Marina has been the mystical smell of wood smoke coming from the bowels of one of the barges moored there. The chimney pot now bereft of smoke, is now the proud backdrop to some freshly planted pots of tiny seeds. We’ll enjoy watching them grow all summer. As we meandered back through the park, one of the young girls was lying along a tree branch with a daisy chain crown in her hair. For all the world it looked like the backdrop to a magnificent Shakespearean production.

Today we opened the curtains to fluffy balls of snow billowing down turning the landscape into a whitewashed haze of heightened shapes. The cherry trees’ leaves now offer snow blossom. And yet we know that within each one of those cotton wool balls there is still a bud waiting to burst forth. The snow’s trying its best to bring unseasonal cold back but to no avail. The earth is already warmed up enough to keep the Spring and its light with us. Do not despair.

I remember my grandmother saying to me one year that Spring was late that year. I asked her how she knew. “My dear, I’ve seen over 90 springs and I know that each year spring may start early or late, the flowers come when they choose, but most of all I know that spring comes every year, no matter when it starts.” Never forget, that you know that in all the change that there is a constancy. These backdrops change as we move from one set to another, as the play of our life unfolds. But no matter what, that content ease is there for you.