"Just a little rain.."

"Just a little rain, falling all around,
The grass lifts its head to the heavenly sound.."

I went round the garden with my trug this morning, cutting roses in the rain, and felt very like Elizabeth von Arnim in her German Garden. In fact, yesterday I even danced barefoot on the lawn, although I had no servants to hide from as I did so!

I do enjoy the rain. There are so many different types, and they create so many different moods.
Last Thursday it was dark and exciting: we had a thunder storm, and the crashing rumbles overhead were accompanied by thick heavy raindrops falling from the charcoal sky; they hit the windows with a steady drumming, and ran down in a great mass of rivulets.
This morning on the other hand it was much gentler - a constant mizzling which a friend of mine referred to as 'wet rain' - the sort that's so light you don't feel it, but so penetrating you end up drenched. It has got heavier as the day's gone on, but still in a rather drab, miserable way. However, I console myself with the thought that this is the sort of rain we really need. Instead of rushing down in a torrent and immediately sliding off the soil (where to, I ask?), it will all sink steadily down into the thirsty earth, and (hopefully, if they're not leaking) fill the reservoirs.

Oh, what would we do without rain?

"Let us be much with Nature"

I saw a lark the other day, for the first time in my life. It flew down in front of the car, as a friend and I were driving along, and landed in the edge of the field next to us.
What lovely birds they are! Understated, yet elegant, they serenade the skies with their joyous trilling as they hover high up in the blue, calling us to revel with them in summer glory.

Two weeks ago, when we were having long hot days of pure blue skies, I thought that was my favourite kind of weather, but last night we had some rain, and now I'm not so sure. I do love the countryside on a morning after rain. Outside in the garden, a strong wind is chasing itself through the trees and hedges, and above, huge cotton-wool clouds - about three times their usual size - are scudding across the sky. Everywhere there is a feeling of freshness and rejuvenation.

"Let us be much with Nature [....]
Discerning in each natural fruit of earth
Kinship and bond with this diviner clay.
Let us be with her wholly at all hours,
With the fond lover's zest, who is content
If his ear hears, and if his eye but sees;
So we shall grow like her in mould and bent,
Our bodies stately as her blessed trees,
Our thoughts as sweet and sumptuous as her flowers."

Extract from 'On The Companionship With Nature' by Archibald Lampman

A rose by any other name..

The blossom season has finally drawn to an end. The hawthorn, white beam, and rowan were the last to come out, but now they too are gone, faded gracefully away into thick coverings of green. I am sad, because I love blossom dearly, but it has only gone to make way for the roses, and I think perhaps I love them even better.

Across the road from our house is a great bush of small, delicate, pale pink roses. They tumble over the wall in a great mass, eager to see the world; and as they poke their cheery faces out of a thick green jumper of foliage, their enchanting scent spills out and delights those delight in them.

In our garden we have a red rose. It has been blooming for some weeks now, and it's a lovely strong colour, but somehow I cannot seem to care for it. Perhaps it is too proud, or too self-sufficient, but at any rate it gives no feeling of warmth.
I think I shall call it Jane Fairfax: "... her temper excellent in its power of forbearance, patience, self-control; but it wants openness. She is reserved..." Yes, indeed. Thank you Mr Knightley, I couldn't have put it better myself.

The Seven Ages of Pheasants

Last spring our lane was terrorized by a cock-pheasant. He would sit for hours in our front flower bed, watching and waiting, and then rush out whenever someone walked past, croaking in an outraged and provocative manner. Every car was followed at a desperate trotting pace, until he had escorted it safely off his territory; and he nearly caused several accidents up at the turning, when two cars came from opposite directions, and he dithered around trying to decide which to chase first.
But the people the pheasant considered as his particular adversaries were post-men. He liked to accompany them on their rounds, running along side them down the road, up every drive (where he would stand to one side in a gentlemanly manner while they posted the letters), and back down to the road again. One postman got so unnerved by this constant chaperonage that he seriously considered arming himself with a stout stick, in case the pheasant should one day forget his manners, and turn on him.

However, this spring has been a much more tame affair, with the pheasant mainly sticking to the back garden. When he has occasionally been round to the front, it is in a very self-effacing manner. Perhaps last year he was a hot-blooded teenager, and this year he begins to feel the dignity of his age..

Neon birds

Every year we are visited by a bullfinch. Often he brings his wife with him, although she is harder to spot, as her plumage is so much duller than his; she always looks as though someone has thrown a bucket of muddy water over her, and she hasn't got round to washing it off yet.
Usually they come during the winter and hang around near the house, pecking the old seeds off the low bushes, but they never visit for long, and this winter I missed them. I'm not sure if this was due to their absence, or my never happening to be near a window at the right time, but no matter! Yesterday morning, he came.
He was on his own, standing on the lawn about half-way down the garden, pecking away at the bluebells under our old apple tree. I didn't have any binoculars handy, so I don't know if he was collecting insects for his young, or gathering up my dog's fur for nesting materials, but either way he looked very dashing as he went about his business in his striking pink coat. It really is the most astonishing colour - almost neon; like the yellow of rape-seed, I am taken aback every year to see such a fluorescent colour in the natural world.

"Have you seen the little piggies crawling in the dirt?"

There is something very soothing and comforting about a scene of livestock domesticity: lambs lying in twos beneath the shade of a clump of trees; a small herd of brown cows, lazily swishing their tails in a gently rolling field full of buttercups; a dozen piglets gamboling excitedly round a stolid sow. And though every year the individual animals of such scenes may change, yet every year these tableaux are repeated. They are like cloud-scapes - ever changing, yet ever the same, renewing themselves and repeating themselves, over and over again.

Nice weather for ducks...

One of my favourite experiences of summer is the smell of rain steaming off a hot freshly-tarmaced road. Perhaps it's an odd thing to enjoy, but there is something curiously satisfying about that rich, slightly harsh smell. It's also a pleasure by association; evocative of the joy of summer holidays, it brings with it the memory of freedom: six whole weeks off school! Six weeks of hot sun and blue skies, filled with endless hours of doing nothing much at all.
It can't really have been all like that all the time, but one's memory has a clever way of editing reality. And of course, when I think about it, the smell is probably just the result of noxious chemicals being released from the wet tar, but hey ho! such is life..

Here in the village there is no fresh tarmac, and when I opened the front door this afternoon, to bring in the milk bottles, I was greeted instead by the scent of rain-drenched flowers and blossom. Such a rich perfume! It hung heavy in the air like incense, almost over-whelming in its richness.

Careless Rapture!

"In the heavens he has set a tent for the sun,
which comes out like a Bridegroom from his wedding canopy,
and like a strong man runs its course with joy."
                                                                           Psalm 19 v 4b - 5 (ESV)

This has been the warmest April that England has had for over 300 years (since records began - whether a warmer April was had pre-1659, we'll never know).
I can well believe it. Such blue skies and sunshine as we've been treated to is almost indecent! But what a treat it is to lie out in the sun so early in the year, on properly dry grass - as opposed to the sort that pretends to be dry until you've been sitting on it for ten minutes, at which point it reveals itself to be just damp enough to leave green stains.
And not just for one day, but days on end, including two bank holiday weekends! Most un-British.

The swallows and house-martins returned earlier this week to set up house-keeping for the summer, and add to the general joyous atmosphere by shrieking and swooping over-head in a glorious display.

I think Browning perfectly captures my delight:
"And after April, when May follows,
And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows!
Hark, where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
Blossoms and dewdrops - at the bent spray's edge -
That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!"
                                                      Extract from 'Home-Thoughts, from Abroad'