cruel april

April is the cruellest month, I read appositely in T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land last night. you put carrot seeds in and there is a frost – you know they won’t germinate. you hope your apple trees will hold back on their blossom until the cold weather is over.

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blackthorn with its delicate white flowers on bare thorn laced twigs looks like snow on the hedges. it’s nearly over now so late in April.

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the primroses last a lot longer in a cold April though.

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every spring I find it miraculous that there are so many of them in our hedge banks and ditches. the violets are hardly started yet, I can’t see any in Clip Street. one of the best places for them has been ripped up by the cable trench excavations and general mess, plus the ditch has been cleaned out. there are plenty under the Bale holm oaks though, it must be warmer there.

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at the bottom of Cakes lane the scrub willows have their catkins at the ready.

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oak trees are patchy, some have their catkins out and a pale green haze of new leaf

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others are stubbornly in winter mode. the green of new oak leaves is a special colour, with a brilliant warmth.

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in Clip street the hares are out to play, and the linnets and yellowhammers singing.

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wild cherry blossom is out

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the cow parsley is springing up

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in Bullfer Grove over in Gunthorpe the bluebells are glowing with that wonderful shimmering blue

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and in my garden the cowslips are beginning to crowd in clumps.

 

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