"I can see clearly now the rain has gone..."

"And in a little while the heavens grew black with clouds and wind, and there was a great rain."
                                                                                 1 Kings 18: 45

For weeks past the ground has been getting drier and drier. In the fields around the village great cracks appeared in the earth, as the land grew parched and weary; the levels in the reservoirs crept lower and lower, and the threatened hose-pipe ban became reality.

And then the rain came. On and on it rained, for days and days, sometimes in heavy-sheeted downpours, and sometimes in a gentle monotonous drizzle; sometimes it threw in a bit of hail, just for a change, and sometimes thunder and lightening would throw in their two penn'orth (so as not to feel left out of the fun).


They say (whoever 'they' are) that no amount of rain at this time of year will make any difference to Britain's Situation of Drought, because it all gets soaked up by the plants and there's none left to fill the reservoirs; perhaps that is true, but I think there would have been quite enough left for the reservoirs, if only the water people would keep them in proper trim, and not let them leak all over the place. 
However! the plants certainly did soak it up; and in just a week our lane has been transformed from a brownish youth, only just out of winter, into the full verdant glory of Spring's young womanhood...

Early morning walk

Yesterday, my dog and I went for an early morning walk. We set off straight after breakfast; the sun shone, the sky was blue, and every thing looked fresh and bursting with life after a few days of rain. Up above, the flag on the church flapped joyously in the breeze, and in the copse a thrush sang.

++++++++++++++++

I am rather fond of gates.
They have such an intoxicating combination of invitation and forbidden entrance, that I cannot walk past even the most mundane without feeling a little twinge of excitement. On our walk today I had the joy of walking through two kissing gates (so romantic, even if one is, in fact, on one's own...), the second of which opens onto a glorious view of the Chilterns.

We walked slowly on, taking a little path beside the copse where I heard the thrush, and came across another gate; and here was richness! An old iron, padlocked specimen, it's stone pillars covered in ivy, and the path beneath all over-grown with grass, it stood tall and proud in its half-forgotten state. I should not have been surprised to know that the house it led to was named Satis...

Who knew Miss Havisham lived in Oxfordshire?

It also reminded me of Shelley's Ozymandias, except that these 'legs of stone' were surrounded by green fields and not lone and level sands:

"Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert...
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away."

Peter

On the eve of Good Friday, Jesus was arrested. His trial lasted all night and well into the morning. All his followers took fright and ran away, leaving Jesus to face death alone; only Peter followed along behind in the darkness. When Jesus was taken to the high priest's house, Peter crept into the yard outside, and tried to squeeze in unnoticed beside the night-watchers' fire; but a Galilean has an accent, and a firebrand follower of the strange new teacher who claimed to be God, was likely to be remembered by the more observant members of the public...

"Hey, you! Aren't you a friend of the man who's been arrested?"
"No! No, I'm not."
"Yes, you are. I've seen you with him."
"No. You must be mistaken. I don't know him."
"Of course you do. You're obviously from Galilee, like him. I bet you're one of those 'followers'."
Poor Peter. If they kill the leader, how much more quickly will they kill the follower.
"I told you, I've never met him!" he cried.
And then the cock crowed. What was it Jesus had said to him? "Before the cock crows today, you will disown me three times."
And Peter went outside, and wept bitterly.

When my mother was at university, a friend taught her a song telling the story of that night. Over the years, it has become a family favourite. Never having come across it anywhere else, we have come to the conclusion that it must have been actually written by that friend - or perhaps a friend of that friend. The song is called Stand in the Shadow, Peter. I have recorded myself singing it, and you can find it in the column on the right.

"Bluebirds flying..."

"I wanna see the sunshine after the rain;
  I wanna see bluebirds flying over the mountains again."

Last week was dank, damp, and dreary. A permanent milky whiteness hung thickly over the fields, waiting to be burnt off by a sun which never came out for more than half an hour a day - if we were lucky. Occasionally we had a little rain (though nothing like enough to hold off the threatened hose-pipe ban), but even on the days when there was none at all, a general murk of moisture hung in the air which dampened everything and everyone. It hung in little droplets on the trees, and settled in a silver mist over the grass; and it got inside me, and slowed my body down to such an extent that for a whole week I functioned at the pace of a sickly snail...

But every weather has its plus sides, if only you can find them, and depressing, illness-inducing dampness is no exception. As I came back from church on my mobility scooter, the delicate scent of wet grape hyacinths rose to greet me. It took me back twenty years!

And of course, the dampness didn't last. I wouldn't live in a country that had a climate for all the jewels in Christendom. Give me changeable weather any time!
On the very day that I wrote to a friend, crying out for sun, the sun came. Unfortunately, I was so excited by this sudden change that I behaved rather foolishly, and managed to contract both sunstroke and a chill at the same time. This combined to give me the curious and decidedly unpleasant sensation of being on ship in a slightly choppy sea, and I was unable to maintain an upright position during the whole of the second half of the evening; even walking down our short corridor resulted in the kind of clutching at furniture more often seen on a ferry crossing the English channel. However, I am all restored to health this morning, and ready to enjoy the rest of the weekend (hopefully in a more sensible, and slightly less theatrical manner...)

"The flowers appear on the earth"

 "...for behold, the winter is past;
     the rain is over and gone.
  The flowers appear on the earth,
     the time of singing has come...

 Arise, my love, my beautiful one,
      and come away.
 O my dove, in the clefts of the rock,
      in the crannies of the cliff,
 let me see your face,
      let me hear your voice,
                                                    for your voice is sweet,
                                                         and your face is lovely."
                                                              
                                                                  - from the Songs of Solomon

Daffodowndilly

She wore her yellow sunbonnet,

  She wore her greenest gown;

She turned to the southwind

  And curtsied up and down.

She turned to the sunlight

  And shook her yellow head,

And whispered to her neighbour:

  "Winter is dead."

                                        -- A A Milne

"This is the day..."

"This is the day which the LORD hath made;

we will rejoice and be glad in it."                             - Psalm 118: 24

I don't know about you, but I think that a Leap Day is terribly exciting, even when nothing special happens. Every second of every hour feels like a present, to be celebrated and rejoiced in with uplifted hands; for it is a reminder that every day we live, in truth, is a gift of grace...

We went out on a drive yesterday, and I saw lots of encouraging signs of Spring: a diddy-wee brown calf lying curled up next to its mother; a tractor sowing seed in the middle of a ploughed field; a crow flying over head with a great long twig for its nest clamped firmly in its beak; and a whole lot of lambs gambolling and frisking about, as though they simply couldn't contain their joy at being alive.
Even a short walk down our lane brings ample proof that the season is turning. The daffodils, whose tightly furled buds have been tantalising us for weeks past, are finally coming out in triumph, and the line of dancing yellow trumpets looks like a string of gaily-clad heralds proclaiming the arrival of their Queen.

But despite all this, I'm not sure that Winter has quite given up. It hangs on by its fingertips, every now and then throwing out a long icy tenticle of chilly weather, as if it would lay claim to the full forty days given it by Candlemas/Groundhog day...