quidnovis61

Early last autumn I wrote about Prickles and if you remember, he was a rather modern hedgehog preferring to hibernate in an old plastic bag under the shelves in our garage - either he is very modern, wanting a fresh plastic bag for his winter home or a rather lazy hedgehog not wanting to go through the annual hassle of fixing a home. I have heard him shuffling and snoring and making hedgehoggy noises one evening this winter so I knew he was still there... maybe he was having hedgehoggy dreams?

Well the news now is... SPRING IS HERE!! I mean really and truly...

Coz ....

Yesterday when I parked the car in the garage... the plastic bag was protruding out and he had pushed out a car sponge from under the shelf...and NO Prickles anywhere! So he must have crept out at night (being nocturnal animals) and gone looking for food - he must be ravenous! Oh dear! I do hope he finds all the delicacies that nature can provide for him...

Well, it was nice to have a lodger all winter. I was amply paid (as rent) by the sheer joy of having such a distinguished visitor under my roof - or my shelf, as the case may be.

(Scroll down and see the autumn pictures!!! )

Signing off for now

C.S

Yes it is Easter and there are many ways to celebrate it... The "traditional" religious/ Christian celebration or, as it is for me, a turning point of the year after the bleak dull grey cold Scandinavian winter - it is the season of Hope - Spring. And thereby a celebration of Life itself.

April is one of the most beautiful months I can imagine. Etymologically this month seems to have derived its name from the Latin "to open" - aperire - or even in Modern Greek ‘april' which means opening. There are other theories as well. One of them being that it was Aphrodite's month named after her (Aphros in Greek) or even as far back as her Etruscan (ca. 800 BC!!!) name Apru... I don't know which is accurate but I do like the theory of the Latin aperire. So I think I will stick to that...

All winter I have chanted like a mantra P.B Shelley's lines: "If Winter be here, can Spring be far behind?" anticipating the transformation so longed for....and now finally after the desolate barren days of winter, Spring is here in all its glory...

Birds sing in their sharp high sopranos, almost painfully beautiful. My magpies Maggie and Reggie and other tiny birds are in the garden busy foraging for building material for their nests and I see Maggie often swooping over the roof with a twig in her mouth sailing gracefully into a tree in the forest across the road.



The trees will soon be in tiny leaf, the birches around our house will be clothed in gossamer green - such a sight - it reminds me of bright green fluttering chiffon dupattas in India. My apple tree has been pruned for the season and soon will blossom with fragrant pink-white blooms. Everywhere in the garden as one parts the dead leaves of winter one finds signs of spring - and yes even earthworms that my blackbird couple Mr & Mrs Singh love to tug at...! (Yes, early in the morning actually... What is it one says...? "The early bird catcheth the worm." (1670)

(Here is Mr Singh with a twig in his mouth)

My early morning walks can still be frosty. The earth is heavily scented with the damp soil getting ready to nourish its entire forthcoming offspring. The ditches are soon going to be filled with the excited shouts of small children playing in them - armed with butterfly nets on a pole, buckets and jam jars hunting for frog spawn, tadpoles, salamanders...and discovering life after all these months when the Earth seems to have been at a standstill.

It is a time for rebirth, anticipation and re-awakening and thereby Hope - and a time for dreams, plans, desires and expectations. I took these photos last spring ... I took them - one every alternate day - and literally saw these tiny flowers "in action" ... the memory of their resilience and fervour for life still does not fail to amaze me.

(Even when they had bloomed fully they still carried the leaf...)

 

They were just there one day...tiny dots of white. These frail, Lilliputian snowdrops in my garden. When I parted the thicket of the rather prickly silver Japanese pine I was amazed at what I saw.  These fragile delicate blooms, the harbingers of Spring had made holes and pierced through the thick dead leaf of yester-winter. They had groped their way UP from the murky caliginous soil seeking the light...and in doing so even succeeded in lifting up the dead leaf! Such is the power of Hope and the whisper of God and Creation around us.

How better to illustrate Hope?

Signing off for now
C.S