An English Spring

After a winter that even I, the enthused tourist was finally sick of, the first green flush of lurid green came over the hills and through the garden gates of Hampshire.

I had been watching the hard little buds on tree and bush alike, waiting for them to loosen, and as each little tuft of viridian was teased from it's envelope, I greeted it with a smile.

Like all changing of seasons, there is a little confusion in the handing over of the baton; mild days are followed with cold, which are followed again by warm. 

 

Evening sun on the Itchen River

Each return to cold I feel concern for the birds with their eggs that need the leaves to hide their little nests, naked as they are to the sky. We insiders instead fiddle with the on/off of heaters and bed eiderdowns.

Daffodils were the guard of honour, saluting the very first certain change. The avenues of trees near our home were bare of leaf, but the ground around there roots had erupted in a sea of green spears. When finally the trees wore a three day fuzz of faintest green, the grass at their feet was gold with daffodils and a tiny freckling of crocus. You cannot look at a mass of daffodils in the sunshine without smiling. Everywhere we went, a little splash of yellow called out: “look here, look there, we are everywhere!”

 

In the woods, wild garlic sprang up, green and juicy and carpets of innocent white wood anemones. Thousand of polka dotted green spades also arrive which I find out later are the elegant white and bronze lilies called ‘Lords and Ladies’.

In fields and churchyards and along lanes, buttery yellow primroses are the pretty buttonhole on every green collar. These are followed in turn by their cousins the cowslips which I did not know at all,  except for my memory of the wonderful novel Watership Down where it is the floral name of a rabbit character. All these new discoveries I make of things I have ‘known of’ and yet until now, never known at all.

 

 

The same flowers adorn gardens and countryside alike and I can't tell which might have been where first- are they clambering out of yards or climbing in?

 The grass, under the influence of warmth and sunlight, becomes the most vivid emerald green. I had thought England would be green in winter with all the rain but really it is a surprisingly brown thing, reminding me that rain is not enough, it is sunlight that brings out that glorious colour.

 Our back lawn begins to grow like crazy and daisies spring up it like a night full of stars. And the dandelions, one of my dearest favourites, come into their glory. In lawns and ditches and meadows and out of every crack in buildings and cobble, their happy faces smile.

 If spring has a colour here, it is certainly yellow.

 

 

And the blossom trees, easily outshining the prettiest new green leaf, send showers of pale pink and white confetti into the waiting cups of tulips and picnickers alike.

The first butterflies appear too and I looked up each ones name with as much excitement as if I had seen a fairy. Comma’s, Peacocks, Brimstones- I ooh and ahh them all.

 

Peacock butterfly
 

 

 Lumbering bumblebees trawl every bed and tree, clearly muttering about the sheer volume of work before them.

We buy a little barbeque to mark the change of season. Though we near freeze to use it, we felt we hve seen in the season by eating food cooked outdoors, looking eagerly through the glass at that near day we can dine outside too.

 

 

As spring ripens I begin to anticipate the much talked of bluebells.

 My English mother, long living in Australia waxes lyrical and misty-eyed about this flower every Australian spring. They grew in the woods where she had played as a child and have clearly taken seed there.

 

On the first sunny day I think they might actually be out, I dragg the family off to the nearby Micheldever Wood.
 Families and photographers alike are enjoying the wood, and I like them, am thrilled to see the seasons first glimpse of these famous wild lilies.

This first day, they are still new, only a few bells open, so a week later I try again in the closer Crab Wood. They are mostly open this time and it is another magical sunny day.
 I have to say, the sight of bluebells in the dappled shade of a spring wood is enough to make a forty-two year old girl fairly skip with excitement- and I do!

 

Fil, happy but not skipping.

One further week later, we have our richest viewing, quite unexpectedly on another walk not far from home. I had been out enjoying butterflies and flowers in general in meadow and farmland, when we came across some small copses of trees underneath which were the most wonderful lavender swathes of bluebells. They are at their very peak and I have to thank my very patient husband because I dawdled  for hours, raving on and exclaiming, taking picture after picture.

 

We saw the bluebells again one last time, in their dotage when we took city-living family to see them a few weeks later. Though the bells are still lovely, I feel very sad for my family as though they have  missed something very vital. My sister in law, a brilliant florist, tells me that summer is her favourite time and that I should ‘wait’ until I saw it.

 I am already beside myself with wonder and happiness and worry that I might actually suffer a happiness breakdown if things get any more wonderful.

 

Pastures of golden canola field come into flower and I swear that you cannot pass them without gaining a tan; the yellow is so bright it makes you squint and reach for sunglasses.
 

We visit thatched villages, with old brick walls covered in clematis and early buds of wisteria, and sit for the first time in six months in sunny beer gardens, sipping local cider and ale.

Mottisfont Abbey, one of our favourite haunts

It islso time to visit beautiful estates and gardens again, walking across perfect cricket lawns and along the riverside, marvelling at the fat trout amongst the swaying waterweeds.

My  brave boys swimming at Twyford

 

Spring in England is a beautiful song, sung with passion and each day out in it is a terrible happiness for me. I say terrible because I cannot in anyway see how I can bare to leave it.

 

How stupid of us to choose the summer in which to leave, like leaving an achingly handsome lover as they are about to kiss you for the first time.

 Each new thing I see, each delight I witness is a little punch to my chest, a real and physical pain.

I see new piglets and lambs in the fields as I walk and new spears of wheat and corn. I love the countryside and realised that this is where I really wantto be. I who grew up my whole life in the sunny suburbs of southern Sydney, long for an English country life.

 

By the river one day, I see the swans have darling blue-grey signets with them and I realise with a jolt, it is nearly a year since we came here- that this same swan family had slightly older signets when we first arrived. The circle is starting to close and I feel sad that I won't get to see these babies grow like I did the others.

Some of my outings with Fil end bitterly, simply because I cannot comprehend how he wants to leave this place that I love so much. I get frustrated and angry and blame anyone who I see as standing between me and my future happiness.

And yet I guess that Fil had saw this time coming. He knew there was a danger that coming to a place I had long-lusted over, and found to be even better in reality, was a place he may not get me to leave from.

His own difficulties in settling, combined with his fear of my wanting to stay, make spring for us both a bittersweet time.

 One evening I go for a walk alone. The days are so long, much longer than Australia and the dusk that seems mere minutes back in Sydney, lasts an hour. I am admiring the beauty of the afternoon when i feel that familiar pang in my chest. I stop for a moment, feeling the pain. Then I realise of course it is not the incredible ambience that causes pain but my fear of separation from it.

 I looked at it all anew. Instead of trying to hold onto it, I look at it, allowing the enjoyment to flow through me like an endless circulation of love and happiness. The pain goes and I know I have found the salve I sorely need.

 

I accept that this is just a moment in time and that it is a time of great beauty for me to enjoy and remember and I make a vow to return some other time but for now my family need to go back to Australia.
I accept that this is where my near future lies but I also know that all things change. Like spring itself I am moving toward the coming summer, knowing that in time it too will move on as shall I, but I make a wish on a dandelion puff, just to be sure I will return here one day.