Poems for Spring

Every year, some time in February or March, depending on the vagaries of the English weather, there comes a sunny day when I walk through the Castle Grounds and smell flowery perfume on a warm breeze, and every year I think ‘how wonderful, spring is on the way’.

Doubtlessly there’s a very logical explanation, because strongly perfumed flowers are already in bloom, like this mahonia, which smells rather honeyish, like oilseed rape perhaps:

 

Or this little creamy white bloom that I think is sweet box – to start with, because of the perfume, I thought it might be some strange kind of jasmine, even though the flower is not right for that. But, like jasmine, it seems to perfume the air for a good distance around:

 

Anyway, I’m always reminded 0f Carl Sandburg’s poem Blossom Themes, which encapsulates that moment when the first flowers begin to appear and you realise winter is on the wane…

Late in the winter came one day

When there was a whiff on the wind,

a suspicion, a cry not to be heard
of perhaps blossoms, perhaps green

 grass and clean hills lifting rolling shoulders.
Does the nose get the cry of spring

first of all? is the nose thankful

and thrilled first of all?
2.
If the blossoms come down
so they must fall on snow
because spring comes this year
before winter is gone,
then both snow and blossoms look sad:
peaches, cherries, the red summer apples,
all say it is a hard year.
The wind has its own way of picking off

the smell of peach blossoms and then

carrying that smell miles and miles.
Women washing dishes in lonely, farmhouses

stand at the door and say, “Something is

 happening.”’
A little foam of the summer sea

of blossoms,
a foam finger of white leaves,

shut these away—

high into the summer wind runners.
Let the wind be white too.

I love that first stanza, with the ‘whiff on the wind’ and the ‘perhaps blossoms’ and the thought that of all the senses it’s smell that recognises spring first, rather than sight, or sound.

And this year I discovered Kathleen Jamie’s poem, The Dash, which also seems to capture the magic of that moment when the year turns, though for her the arrival of spring is heralded by a pair of birds returning to Scotland after wintering somewhere warmer. But the sense of joy is the same, and the feeling of exhilaration that a longed-for event has finally arrived, and I think it’s interesting that Sandburg and Jamie both have the wind blowing spring in quite suddenly – there’s no gradual creeping-in of a new season.

Every mid-February

those first days arrive

when the sun rises

higher than the Black

Hill at last. Brightness

and a crazy breeze

course from the same airt -

turned clods gleam, the trees’

topmost branches bend

shivering downwind.

They chase, this lithe pair

out of the far south

west, and though scalding

to our wintered eyes

look; we cry, it’s here

This poem comes from her collection The Overhaul, which I finally got round to buying because I enjoyed ‘Findings’ and ‘Sightlines’ so much – these two books both contain essays, or reflections, mainly on nature and wild things, and Jamie’s prose is beautifully lyrical, as she uses animals, birds, found objects as a kind of focus to comment on life. I thought they were wonderful, but Jamie is primarily a poet, and I have been meaning to explore her poetry for quite a while, but was wary, because I’d read reviews complaining that her use of Scottish dialect words made her work difficult to understand.

I admit some kind of glossary would be useful, but even if you don’t appreciates the fine  nuances in her choice of words it’s not that difficult to grasp her meaning, and there’s always Google – I know lots of people don’t like it, but I found airt without any trouble, and now know it has to do with direction, as in the compass.

She’s very much a nature poet, who observes creatures and landscapes, and she has a wonderful and unusual way with words and language, that makes you look afresh at the world around you, and think about it in a different fashion. ‘Wintered eyes’, for example, is such an unlikely pairing, yet it’s absolutely right, describing how tired and jaded we feel after a long, hard winter, and how different the world (and our view of it) becomes when spring arrives, bringing the hope of better things ahead. 

The poems need to be read slowly, and thought about, one at a time, so that’s what I’m doing, and so far I’m enjoying them very much, and looking forward to reading more of her work in the future.

Saturday Flowers!

I know it is Sunday, and I should not have a  Saturday Snapshot, but in some parts of the globe (like American Samoa and Hawaii) I believe it is still yesterday, which makes this post OK!

Anyway, this week's Snapshot is very brief (as well as being very late) because my mother is ill, and I am looking after her. So here is a picture I took yesterday of one of her fuschias, and a shot of part of her lovely garden, which is her pride and joy. Aged 85, she still does the garden herself, and grows the plants from seeds and cuttings - she has real 'green fingers' and sticks tiny fragments of flowers and shrubs into pots of earth, or even jars of water, and they flourish for her. She says she talks to them and that's what makes the difference!

Despite being so independent, she has allowed me to mow the grass - but only because she is not well enough to do it herself!

For more Saturday Snapshots see  Alice's blog at http://athomewithbooks.net/ 

Lupins, Radishes, and Triangular Dances

August has come, and has clothed the hills with golden lupins, and filled the grassy banks with harebells. The yellow fields of lupins are so gorgeous on cloudless days that I have neglected the forests lately and drive in the open, so that I may revel in their scent while feasting my eyes on their beauty.

So opens Elizabeth von Arnim's chapter on August in her book The Solitary Summer, which is written in the form of a diary. And, as with some of the other flowers she describes, I suspect that these plants must be very different to the hybridised garden varieties we know today. Modern lupins come in a huge range of pinks and purples, but I cannot call their perfume to mind, so perhaps von Arnim's beautiful blooms were wild flowers.

And here, in her first 'entry' for the month, the writer who sought solitude seeks a companion with whom she can share the pleasure of the lupins. “I am frightened once more at the solitariness in which we each of us live,” she writes, and tells us that only one of her many friends has similar tastes – and that they almost fell out because this particular friend would not like to be a goose-girl! Von Arnim who, it has to be said, has a very romantic view of rural life and country folk, says: “For six months of the year I would be happier than any queen I ever heard of , minding the fat white things.” She would, she adds, keep one eye on the geese, and one on a volume of Wordsworth (overlooking the fact that goose-girls couldn't read, and were unable to return to 'civilised life' during the winter). But nevertheless, she does present a charming view of her imaginary rural idyll.

Visits to the 'middle class' seaside and the pleasures of food come under her scrutiny, but by August 16 she is still concerned with her garden, which should be beautiful from 'end to end'.

It makes one so healthy to live in a garden, so healthy in mind as well as body, and when I say moles and late frosts are my worst enemies, it only shows how I could not now if I tried sit down and brood over my own or my neighbour's sins, and how the breezes in my garden have blown away all those worries and vexations and bitternesses that are the lot of those who live in a crowd.

Her joy in nature, and her love of life, are so enthusiastic that I cannot help but smile with her, and sympathise when she recalls the pious missionary who told her off for being happy when we live in a 'vale of woe'. And I can only agree when she says that if she is miserable and discontented it will not help anyone else.

There's a charming interlude when she discusses naughty boys with the April, May and June babies, who persist in speaking in their usual mix of English and German, with only the occasional word of French. When von Arnim remonstrates with them, she is told that while Seraphines speak French to children, mothers do not (Seraphine is their nurse) and the conversation ends in tears – so she organises a 'ball' for them, where they dance in triangles round the pillar in the library, while she plays cheerful tunes on the piano, before they eat radishes for supper (which give them nightmares) and curtsey before they go to bed. It all sounded a bit a like the impromptu indoor picnics we used to organise for our daughters when they were small, and they ate a back-to-front meal (pudding first) and danced madly round the room while the Man Of The House played his own folk-style nursery rhymes on the guitar. My memories seemed to bring von Arnim closer, and I thought mothers and young children have not really changed all that much over the years.

Later she visits the mill, where the water is 'ablaze with the red reflection of the sky' and the pools are full of water-lilies and eels. This time she doesn't go boating, but she recalls how the miller is always uneasy when she goes punting, for he insists that 'people with petticoats' were never intended for punts and 'their only chance of safety lay in dry land and keeping quiet'. She is tired, so she sits quietly sipping tea and reading Goethe's 'Sorrows of Werther'.

Yellow water-lilies floating in the water.

Sitting there long after it was too dark to read, I thought of the old miller's words, and agreed with him that the best thing a woman can do in this world is to keep quiet... Keep quiet and say one's prayers – certainly not merely the best, but the only things to do if one would be truly happy; but ashamed of asking when I have received so much, the only form of prayer I would use would be a form of thanksgiving.

I don't know that keeping quiet is necessarily the kind of advice that would be welcomed by women in the 21st century, but perhaps counting one's blessings is not such a bad thing.

Parisian Pictures Take Two!

This week's Saturday Snapshots don't need many words, because they're a collection of some of my favourite views of Paris, taken over the last two or three years. My parents were very fond of the city, and planned to celebrate their Diamond Wedding Anniversary there, but sadly Dad died a few months before their special holiday. Since then Mum and I go to Paris for a few days each May.  We have a wonderful time wandering around, and eating French bread and cheese, with huge bags of fresh fruit (the cherries are delicious), and I've taken lots of photographs, which I've been looking at because the weather is so awful, and they cheered me up. So here is a selection of some snaps, as a kind of postscript to the pictures of the Luxemburg Gardens which I posted on my return from our holiday. For more Saturday Snapshots see  Alice's blog http://athomewithbooks.net/

If no-one minds, I'm also posting this for the Paris in July challenge hosted by Karen from BookBath and Tamara from Thyme For Tea. 

The Eiffel Tower, designed and built by engineer Gustave Eiffel to provide the main entrance for the World's Fair in 1889, dominates the city and is incredibly beautiful.

Flowers on a market stall, stacked sideways on to make a wall of blooms.

Bread on another market stall. I love French bread, and the bakers and supermarkets bake twice a day, and you see men cycling home from work, clutching their fresh baguettes as they pedal furiously along the streets.

A boat on the Seine - I couldn't resist taking a picture, because the name is my surname!

YellowIrises in the Jardin Plantes. I love the colours.

More food - French food always looks so mouth-wateringly good.

My mother and I sat in this beautiful courtyard at the Mosque de Paris and drank sweet tea, in the shade of a fig tree, while the birds sang, and we watched men smoking with hookahs, like the Caterpillar in Alice, but I didn't like to take their photo, so I waited until they had gone!

The Flower Market, in the shadow of Notre Dame, on the Ile de la Cite, is one of the most wonderful spots in Paris - you can smell the flowers before you see them. It's a riot of colour and perfume, with all kinds of garden ornaments hanging from the roof and walls.

Notre Dame, perched on the edge of the Ile de la Cite, looks like a ship sailing along the river when photographed from the smaller, quieter Ile de St Louis.

Houseboats moored up on the River Seine.

The French enjoy exercising alongside the Seine on Sunday mornings, when the road is closed to traffic and everyone, from tiny tots to elderly pensioners, turns out to keep fit. Some do exercises holding on to the railings or trees, but mostly they run, jog, walk (often with their dogs), cycle or roller-skate. I think this is such a good idea and it looks such fun, and is very sociable because whole families and groups of friends trot along together, then they all go off for their lunch. It's such a fantastic idea to encourage people to exercise - I wish British towns would do the same. 

Shakespeare and Company, the iconic book shop, is not to be missed. You can browse inside for hours, even if you don't buy anything, and soak up the atmosphere.