Heart strings

Trees leaf. Oaks unfurl and gently reinforce their defences with tannins. The hornbeams have reached opacity. Horse-chestnuts have become unlikely candelabra just as apples are beginning to drop their pale pink confetti.

On the lush lawns yearlings are leaving foalhood as they started it, nuzzling their mares milky teats. The new crop is near to dropping, all legs and fluff soon.

I picked my mandolin this morning, second time in three weeks? Breakfast's sugar shock shaking my strumming arm, missing strokes; fret fingers too soft; remembered chords with no rhythm

litters

After two days warm, in the sun, the journey on Tuesday morning was on drying roads. Under the melding deciduous canopy the road held fine vernal litter. Brown stipules under the beeches, green male flowers under the maple and the microscopic allergenic dust (for those who suffer hay) sprinkled the ground, adding to the colour pallette growing richer with the season.

I saw the first foal, a Shetland, Wednesday; in the sunshine before the day cooled and softened into a hazy, sleepy evening.

Yesterday broke bright and sunny, but the demoralising predictions of the weather folk came to fruition and, though sun and blue pushed past my window into mid morning, they were driving on the edge of stormy weather that occasionally dominated, to soak and wash the fresh spring colours clean again. Herds of herbivorous mammals on the lawns and heaths were having their hair gently ruffled on my morning drive. The evening was accompanied by angry rattling of things not tied down, the flapping of sacks, the hiss of airborne particles blasting glass.

Stiller this morning, clouded, damp. I foolishly woke for the start of the morning chorus; territorial shouts, avian wolf whistles and calls to arms.

First cut (2013)

It was a 9 boxer, but a bit brutal, a bit functional. No edges, just the centre; all the posts and trees still wear their cuffs. Unfortunately I met a frog on the way, but it wasn't one of those embarrassing encounters where you just disable a leg and have to watch them hop in circles because you are too squeamish to finish the job properly, no. It was a proper brain pate event.

It was only a week ago on Friday that I noticed the leaves breaking on the apple trees. That weekend there was a peacock butterfly and a comma. Monday I saw that the custard maple was flowering. Pink cherry opened cheekily last week, to drop and carpet the floor before a light shower on Friday that swept up all the petals to piles.

Some camellias have bloomed patchily this year, looking as though the frost scorched their buds at the wrong time. The tulip flowered magnolias though seem unscathed and are bright beacons in gardens everywhere.
I passed a ditch this morning, lined now with slowly baking green slime. whether due to drainage or the last three dry weeks I don't know, but I seem to remember water in that ditch for a year - since it began to rain last April.

I snook a morning away from my desk and went to almost paddle by the sea. Wearing a jumper, but feeling warm in shelter, I sat a few minutes and groomed beach gravel; just long enough to find a fossil tooth. The folk there were all cheery; happy to share the sun and a few words each according to their need for solitude and the sea. I could have stayed, but I had the wrong sandals and nothing to drink and the usual lingering guilt.