The morning is sunny and warm in the backyard. A noisy bee rejoices among the crocuses. Their purple petals open wide, greedy for the sun’s rays, exposing brilliant orange pollen and their kinship with crocus sativa, source of the dye saffron. More shyly than the extrovert bee, a delicate fly hovers silently just above the flowers. Beyond the fence stand a prunus and two acacias, all still naked of leaves but host to several species of ecstatic birds, whose song is the sweetest music I could desire. I hear a single cry—either a cat’s mew or a newborn baby. From neighbouring backyards and open kitchen doors come human voices, their calls and murmurs transcending centuries and cultures, somehow hushed in awe of this morning, this glittering shard of eternity given to all. High over our roofs, like a guardian angel, a red kite glides, issuing its soft whistle-cry. It sounds like a shepherd’s coded signal to his dog. Higher still is a gang of garrulous wheeling seagulls, joshing like youths. On a chimney-pot stands a lone gull, plangently crying for its mate to return.I’ve been fixing wires on the side fence, the one which best catches the sun, to support the climbing plants I bought last year: jasmine, honeysuckle, clematis—and in pride of place, a climbing hydrangea. Below in the narrow border are some random spring bulbs, three hellebores and a camellia, which I feed every morning with coffee-grounds to counteract the alkaline effect of chalky soil. I’m also nurturing a myrtle, twice-cloned from Lady Tennyson’s bridal wreath, as worn on 13th June 1850.
I cannot find a picture of Emily Sellwood on her wedding-day with myrtle in her hair, so I shall end instead with Tennyson’s poem ‘Wedding Morning’, looking back on their days of wooing, and invoking the aid of the rising Sun to lighten his eyes, heart and blood.
Light, so low upon earth,
You send a flash to the sun.
Here is the golden close of love,
All my wooing is done.
Oh, the woods and the meadows,
Woods where we hid from the wet,
Stiles where we stay’d to be kind,
Meadows in which we met!
Light, so low in the vale
You flash and lighten afar,
For this is the golden morning of love,
And you are his morning star.
Flash, I am coming, I come,
By meadow and stile and wood,
Oh, lighten into my eyes and heart,
Into my heart and my blood!
Heart, are you great enough
For a love that never tires?
O heart, are you great enough for love?
I have heard of thorns and briers.
Over the thorns and briers,
Over the meadows and stiles,
Over the world to the end of it
Flash for a million miles.
I catch a little flash of that light reflected in a bead of golden resin, oozing from the fence-timber, near the myrtle-bush, its most tender leaves scarred and shrivelled by frost. Note to self: make for it a plastic tent next year, on a frame of spiral wire, to spare it from winter’s peril. Living things are subject to birth, maiming and death, but literature is immortal. I show both, side by side, hoping my myrtle in this half-shaded backyard may some day bloom as splendidly as in the picture. As for my love, it blooms already. I have leapt over the thorns and briers. Surely, my heart is great enough for love.
——————
Photo: Alfred Lord Tennyson with wife and sons, about 1862, from Wikipedia.
a wayfarer’s notes 
A wonderful post! Hints of that perennial rebirth.
These are the kind of posts I love here.
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(On a side note: I see they changed the page we get routed to for leaving comments. I suppose it's only a matter of time before Blogger forces us to adopt the new dashboard too. I've held out for almost a year.)
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Thanks, Bryan! As for the new dashboard, I was deceived into having a look. There is no way back, you are stuck with it. It affects how you compose the post. I used to always compose in HTML, and still do, but the way it behaves has changed. But it's OK, you get used to it – like everything.
And as for the post, it is the kind of thing that I always want to write but it depends on the mood and that kind of mood is influenced by the weather.
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Ah Vincent, How lovely your Sunday morning was. I was so delighted when I read your refreshing post. I could see and smell everything. I love it when you get into these moods!
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It sounds like your garden is a reflection of your heart. That warm and sunny ever-hopeful bit that we don't get to see very often.
Thanks for the glimpse!
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Thanks, Rebb & Rev. I love to write about the garden, it is true. There are various other things I want to write about, & produce voluminous notes with that intention, but ultimately the inspiration to polish and publish either comes or it doesn't.
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By the way, Vincent. If you go to your dashboard, you'll see a button with a picture of a cog on the upper right. Clicking the cog will call up a drop-down menu with one of the options “Old Blogger Interface”
Yes, I have been to the new layout, and have returned to the old, and have lived to tell about it ;D
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Wow, Bryan, i feel I have just been resurrected from the dead. I embrace you in gratitude, and embrace the old blogger interface as my long-lost friend.
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I'm not real big on change myself. I get comfy in one space and get petulant when they change things without my permission.
I should know better, but it still pisses me off sometimes.
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What a lovely photograph of them as a family. You're right that some things do live on while others are being reborn right this minute.
Happy Spring, Vincent.
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Thanks, Susan!
You'll note that as in all early photography, this one shows signs of a very long exposure. That's why the foliage background is so blurred. It's not a focus problem but the stirring of the breeze in the leaves.
The family would have been standing like statues, unblinking, for quite a while. See this post in which, if you click the picture to enlarge, you can see the children's eyes blurred from blinking.
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Rev, it gets worse with age! I'm contemplating a post about my recent milestone.
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Lovely post!
Today, in New England, it really felt like spring, albeit a bit early this year.
My mood is always much improved with the arrival of spring and goes into full-blown splendor in the summertime – my time of year. 🙂
I hope I don't leave a trail of links behind me as I leave…
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