What The Bluebells Cannot Tell You

I notice the weather, every day, mainly because it changes so frequently, although this day is the seventh consecutive sunny event, and here I am, eating fruit for breakfast with the windows open again. I wonder how easy it would be to take the weather for granted, if it was reliable, if you lived in one of those places where you could look at the calendar and know what would be happening in the sky. Maybe I would write more about flowers and birds, and what happens in trees and streams. The stream is perfectly interesting and even pretty, despite the junk it curls around, but the only life I’ve seen in it is Dog. Trees are twitching with birds so busy I’m afraid they might have a mass coronary. I imagine the sound of all those feathered bodies thumping onto the grass; hopefully most of them will survive and just have to do less frantic nesting, be a bit more relaxed about sharing territories. Spring buds are evident on the damsons, the pear, and the ridiculously tall cherry. Our hedge daffodils are a bad advertisement for exposure to sunshine, with their bleached out petals shrunken and shrivelled, they resemble a row of Corpse Brides. Under the shade of apple branches, the orchard varieties nod their plump trumpets in a youthful breeze. And halfway up the bumpy lane, bluebells have appeared. A daffodil’s job is to herald spring, bluebells are the messengers of summer coming. They are no guarantors of a decent summer alas, we will have to wait to find out what the weather will throw at us, if we will be licking melted ice cream from our bare fingers or curling cold wet hands inside the sleeves of our raincoats.