Thursday 9 April 2015

Time for my annual bout of blossom worship - the streets around here are stunningly lovely right now


This is currently my favourite blossom tree. It's in the road parallel to ours, and when I descended on it today, camera in hand, there was another chap around my age already in situ, taking pictures of it. So I'm not alone. It isn't particularly tall, but it has an appealingly wide, sheltering span, and there's something about its blossom that is just... perfect. Walking past it on the other side of the road makes me smile, and pausing under it  and looking upwards fills me with something very close to joy.





I would envy the people who simply have to glance out of their windows or step outside their front doors to enjoy this particular tree - but there's a tree right opposite our house which is just starting to wake up and will be utterly glorious in a few weeks' time, which can be ogled from any window at the front of our house. It's getting a bit large for its sliver of pavement and I dread the day when some team of thugs hired by the council turn up to destroy it - but it seems to be safe for this year, at least (I still haven't forgiven the owner of house opposite us for murdering the splendid pear tree in his garden last year - but it was outgrowing its space, and, as we had to sacrifice a Norway Maple in our small back garden eight years' ago for the self-same reason, I didn't have a leg to stand on). 

Here are some other blossomy snaps taken during my afternoon constitutional:








Bliss.

5 comments:

  1. I think that April is my favourite month. The long dark nights of winter have finally been vanquished; summer is almost within our grasp. I always recall Browning's, Home Thoughts From Abroad, at this time of year. It's one of the few poems I can actually remember. Probably because it's rather short...It used to be the schoolboys poem of choice when I was a lad. We all knew it.
    Lovely pic's!

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    1. I suspect it's mainly Carol Ann Duffy and Seamus Heaney in schools these days. We may be the last generation who emerged from school with chunks of poetry lodged in our subconscious - particularly anything that suggests a love of country. But I know some teachers occasionally read this blog, and I'd be delighted to be told otherwise.

      I must be a gloomy old sod, because December's still my favourite month (especially if it's freezing, blowy and snowy) - but April comes a close second, and, as the cold begins to get into my bones more as the years pass, will no doubt eventually overtake December as the month I most look forward to.

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  2. Try the bittersweet Houseman poem from A Shropshire Lad
    "loveliest of trees, the cherry now
    Is hung with bloom along the bough...."
    And I did teach this, in a large comprehensive!

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    1. Respect!
      I'm not sure I was aware of Housman when I left school - I came to him through musical settings of his works, mainly those by Butterworth and Vaughan Williams. Now, he's one of my favourite poets. A particular treat was reciting "On Wenlock Edge" on Wenlock Edge. Anyway, I wrote about him here:
      http://scottgronmark.blogspot.co.uk/2010/08/ae-housman-bit-of-ratbag-but-terrific.html

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    2. Thanks for the direction! Read and enjoyed. Alan Bennet lets Hector do a good job on Housman in The History Boys too. I think he ( Housman ) is greatly underrated and undeservedly out of fashion.

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