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They arrived with the spring equinox on March 20th…
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… days hot in the sun, but ice-cold in shade, as if the air came straight off a snow field…
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…yet so enlivening, it had us one day walking (instead of driving) to the builders’ merchants on the edge of town…
…spotting, as we went, wild cherry blossom, the bright white blackthorn that is everywhere in drifts on farm hedgerows, and then the distant green of wheat fields and fresh grassland.
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Meanwhile, the town lanes and gardens have been aglow with magnolias, daffodils, pussy willow, forsythia, camellias, fire-red japonica…
…and the cherry plum by the house has day by day been turning from pink to bronze, as blossom flutters off and gives way to leaves.
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And so the Shropshire countryside has been drowsing in a haze of vernal glamour: an earth dream of a perfect spring come to life.
The blue sky days turned into weeks, three to be exact. Long enough for us to grow used to blissful weather, to think it ours forever.
In the garden, our faces turned often to the sun, we noted the little pear tree begin to flower…
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…and the old apple tree by the compost bin burst with buds…
…that then begin to open…
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…just in time for Sunday’s full moon and a complete change in the weather…
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Today there is grey sky, racing rain clouds and a piercing wind that gusts down the chimneys. It feels like winter when we walk to the shops, clad in sweaters, quilted coats and woolly hats. We’re cast adrift in seasonal confusion. Bereft. Abandoned by spring. How could she do this when we so loved the sun, the light, the crisp air?
Ah, well. The weather people say the wind should lessen tomorrow, all but doubling temperatures from 6 to a soaring 11 degrees C. There might also be a view of the sun on Easter Sunday morning, but little to see in the following week. Instead, there will be rain, of which this gardener and the nation’s farmers are much in need. So it goes. All chop and change. Perhaps blue sky spring will be back in May.
copyright 2025 Tish Farrell
Lens-Artists: abandoned This week Anne sets us the topic ‘abandoned’. Please see her post for more serious cases of abandonment.
