Category: spring

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daffodils

Perth is a snowdrop festival: between the roots of trees in gardens, in the cracked courtyard of a derelict hotel and all along the banks of the Tay they gather, keeping company with the congregations of patchily-plumed black-headed gulls, which swoop and flutter over the river and its offerings of soggy bread.

The snowdrops are shy, or coy, hanging their heads delicately, while the crocuses burst rudely through beside them, pungent purple buds bulging skywards like proud phalluses. I try to prise one open but they’re holding their petals tightly closed, keeping their egg-yolk yellow insides stiffly guarded for now.

One small bunch of daffodils has come out, however – strangely early as they haven’t begun to open anywhere else on the river banks, nor were any open in warmer South Wales when we left yesterday morning on St David’s Day. They stand about nonchalantly in their frilly jaune abandon. And wee kids are out too in bright yellow vests, giggling at the gulls while they’re being shepherded about, enjoying a fluorescent florescence of their own. It’s all happening here. The season curls its yellow lip and coils, waiting to spring.

small clutch of daffodils with yellow-vested children in distance behind

Perth, Scotland
2nd March 2015

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motion

snail on window

The season is on the move. Brambles sneak out their long thorny feelers, green fern heads unwind and the catkins on the alder give way to fresh folds of leaves, thrusting through like small fingers, grasping at the air. In the pulsing world too, things are on the go. Tortoiseshell butterflies drift on gentle gusts around the garden; jackdaws congregate in ragged black crowds to ride up and down the air currents above the rooftops; the white doves from the next village batter up and down the valley more energetically than ever; and high up on the hilltop moors, a red kite slowly circles.

Under the sun, all these layers of life reaching skyward. But none impress me so much as the visitor on our windowpane, who, with resolve and audacity, is quietly going for it, at a snail’s pace, climbing infinitesimally up.

Pontycymer, South Wales
6th April 2014

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equinox

     finally
           we tilt sweetly
        towards the sun

Pontycymer, Cwm Garw, South Wales
20th March 2014

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the green fuse

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
drives my red blood; that writhes the roots of trees
rouses my desire;
and my flesh runs with the rich sap’s flood
as my limbs spring with the same green fever….

When I lived in Montreal winters were bitterly cold, and so long. Even into March everything was still smothered in thick snow, gripped hard in grey ice. Other than the dark blue-green of a few conifers in parks, no living vegetation was visible and it felt like the whole world was held in a sterile stasis. By late February I’d start to feel a deep longing, an almost physical thirsting for greenness, and I’d be scouring the city for the sight of the slightest green blade poking or peeking through.

The first time I was back visiting Scotland in the winter I was amazed by the colour of city parks and gardens and would wander across lawns reverently marvelling at their soft green hue, brushed only lightly by sparkling morning frosts and giving way to stronger vibrant green by mid-morning; and when the shoots of snowdrops and crocuses came pushing through in late January, it felt miraculous. I felt that I had come to some secret northern paradise.

I’d kneel down to feel the firm fine shoots between my fingers, and cup their swollen buds in my hands trying to feel the force that was thrusting them from the earth, pushing them spear-like through the grass.

This year (now back in Scotland properly) the snowdrops came as usual, their fragile forms belying their hardiness, as they bobbed up and down through snowfall after snowfall, and I eagerly anticipated the (comparatively) early Scottish greening. But as the crocuses and daffodils waited coiled beneath the soil, the unusually late spring drew my green thirst again, as trees stayed bare and late snows and cold winds blew over the pale land.

Until all at once, everywhere: buds folding out green fingers, ferns unrolling feathered fronds and even the gorse bursting brightly, as the world quickens into flower, flutters into leafy green flame.

gorse

Oh greenness! Green for growth, for firm but supple strength; green for a fresh profusion of life. And green for gladness, for this force that germinates and generates, driving the flower, and driving all of us, in our continual and generous emergence.

Green for gladness; green for verdant, luminant life. And green for gratitude: for the sunlight coursing through the floral fuse and – as we go to greet it – for the sunlight pouring through ourselves.

*

Dylan Thomas, ‘The force that through the green fuse drives the flower’

Strathendrick, Stirlingshire, Scotland / St David’s Head, Pembrokeshire, Wales
30th March / 4th May 2013