Mm Links April 2013 Week 4
Spring, at last, seems to have sprung. Our snowdrops having been in flower for what seems like forever have packed it in. Daffodils, at long last, are out. There is, in the Strix garden, an invasion of wild garlic. But the trees are still very backwards in coming forward. A horticultural friend reckons that they are nearly a month behind in their normal cycle.
The weather has now become more normal with April showers but even yesterday afternoon we were hit by a hailstorm. Despite that, when I drove past the local garden-centre the car park was full. So the owners must be grateful that finally people are buying plants and shrubs. No doubt the public have been encouraged by television programmes extolling the virtues of home-grown produce with instructions of how to preserve, and store fruit and vegetables. There is nothing better in mid-winter than raiding and defrosting something from the deep-freeze or opening a bottle or Kilner jar and smelling and tasting a memory of those lost days of summer past.
“O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool’d for a long age in the deep-delvèd earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country-green,
Dance, and Provencal song, and sunburnt mirth!”
from ‘Ode to a Nightingale’, John Keats
Good luck to you all.