March. 2014. Today it feels like spring!

Birthday daffodils from a friend. 

 I was writing in my journal this morning, and I'll echo the words here in this blog.
"Sitting here just after my breakfast, looking out at the back garden  through the expanse of the patio window.
The sky is clearing from it's overnight rain.
Grey clouds mingling with white, and tints of veiled blue beginning to make their presence known.
The two magpies,who are building a nest a couple of gardens along, have been here looking for twigs and small branches. Cocky, strutting birds, with a swagger, and a sheen of black and white plumage.
Mother blackbird, of our garden pair, is digging up worms in the bottom lawn.
She now overturns clumps of moss in here search.
Father bird sitting on the pinnacle of the summerhouse.
A fat wood-pigeon balances on a branch of our ancient apple tree, trying to reach seed from the feeders, but I have already placed them where the pigeons cannot reach.
The light is returning to this part of our hemisphere, and a sense of spring after the wettest winter since records began.
  Father blackbird is now singing his beautiful song. A glimmer of sunshine brightens the green of the shrubs and box hedge, until it reaches the far boundary fence.
A plane glides round in the sky on it's gradual descent to the airport several miles away."
                 

After breakfast I went to buy a new pair of garden secateurs from a nearby centre in order to complete the spring pruning of the roses. The centre borders on some fields. As I was walking back to the car, I heard the liquid notes of a skylark, soaring up into the clear blue. The first I have heard this year. Such a joyful sound. I stopped to listen.

To a Skylark

BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

Ethereal minstrel! pilgrim of the sky!

Dost thou despise the earth where cares abound?

Or, while the wings aspire, are heart and eye

Both with thy nest upon the dewy ground?

Thy nest which thou canst drop into at will,

Those quivering wings composed, that music still!

Leave to the nightingale her shady wood;

A privacy of glorious light is thine;

Whence thou dost pour upon the world a flood

Of harmony, with instinct more divine;

Type of the wise who soar, but never roam;

True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home!

      

 I came home and began to prune the roses, not needing a coat or jacket, with the sun warm on my face. Spring is beginning once more in that great cycle of seasons and life, with it the season of Lent, which began this week with Shrove Tuesday.

Tiger on my birthday in February.

      A group of us spent Ash Wednesday evening in a time of reflection, and shared Communion together. It was very special.
   So another season of the year unfolds................................................................