The Month of May

May started with glorious blue skies, blossom appearing on the apple tree in our garden, green shoots appearing everywhere, wearing shoes without socks.
Painted toe nails - one of the advantages of being 30+ weeks pregnant is that I have to have a pedicure, there is no way I can reach my toes to paint them!
A delightful christening of godchild number six and catching up with dear friends.
Mother and Pops coming up for the day. First time cooking summer food, pottering in the garden together and enjoying the sunshine.
My last week at work before maternity leave - all happening at just the right time. The final day, cards from different classes and being sung to by the different classes in my team. Receiving some lovely gifts, including a nappy cake and then to Canary Wharf for pizza. Home very tired.
Off to Twin and the Blessings for a lovely day. A BBQ in the garden and practising putting on a baby sling with a doll.
Cooking Warmth the meal I cooked on the weekend we became engaged as a celebration for first day of maternity leave.
Mother and Pops coming up for what should have been a day of gardening, but the persistent rain meant we sorted out the linen for TT.
Meeting up with a dear friend for lunch at Peter Jones and then on to try to get ahead by buying cards and gifts for all the summer birthdays.
Days having a gentle rhythm of reading, eating, napping, preparing for TT, pottering in the garden, doing small jobs.
A very belated birthday pamper day with Twin and Mother at Eastwell Manor. So lovely to have a facial, laze in the rest room, float in the deserted pool, have a foot massage, chat and catch up.
Off into town for friend's birthday meal at Bambou. I was determined to stay for supper and not just the drinks part. This will probably be the last time we go out on a Saturday night together with no babysitter.
Meeting up with new NCT friends for lunch at The Station, then after a brief afternoon nap out to Dalys Wine Bar to catch up with old friends.
A very wet day in Sloane Square, hoping to enjoy looking at Chelsea in Bloom shop windows, instead hiding in Patisserie Valerie with a dear friend and then hopping to The Saatchi Gallery and stumbling across Festival des Metiers a Hermes exhibition.
A final pre baby hair cut and lunch with Mama and Papa Warmth.
Good friends for a takeaway curry - we've finally found a good local takeaway Indian.
Pops' 70th birthday celebrations. Nieces, nephews, great nieces and nephews, aunts and immediate family. Thirty in all and the sun shone so magnificently that we spent the whole day outside, suntan lotions necessary.
A lovely Bank Holiday Monday - eating supper outside. Then the next day it rained and rained...
Quickly, or as quickly as I move at the moment, popping to Lambs Conduit Street to Persephone to buy Twin's birthday gift and then deciding I did have time to pop in Ben Penreath, even though I was then late meeting up with dear old colleagues at our favourite restaurant The National Portrait Gallery Restaurant. Lovely to see the views of London in daylight.

Finally finished Restoration by Rose Tremain - quite unlike her other books I've read.  It was a long slow slog. Speeded through Cocktails under the tree of forgetfulness by Alexandra Fuller and The Rain before it Falls by Jonathon Coe. Baked this lemon drizzle cake for NCT ladies day, Hummingbird's Peanut butter and chocolate biscuits. A Ricotta and Lemon Cake, to use up left over ricotta, for Twin and Blessings.

The last day in May Twin and the blessings up and this also means the last month without a bundle of baby in our lives...

almond blossom in the garden

Let's daydream a little...

'When the first days of April come, something steals into the air and touches you upon the cheek, and the touch travels downwards to your body, and your body comes alive. The windows are flung open. The sparrows in St. John's Wood chatter, but the little sooty tree on the pavement opposite has a blackbird on its naked branch. Further down the road there is a house that has almond blossom in the garden. The buds are fat and luscious ready to burst.' Daphne Du Maurier The Parasites

spring

branches clotted with waxen blossom

'...she roamed zigzag across the garden, and getting out again through a gap, found herself facing the sealike uplands. Step quickening, she kept in close to the flank of the woods raggedly edging the river gorge. Some way along the elder grew leaning forward, its branches clotted with waxen blossom within themselves forming a cave. Heavy was the scent, rank the inside darkness which filtered through. The girl, having reached the spot, without hesitation parted the branches and dived between them.' Elizabeth Bowen A World of Love

blossom

Oh to dive into branches clotted with blossom.

soft spring sunshine

The herald of spring is wonderful in so many countries. Reading these spring thoughts in Australia, could be spring thoughts in many other countries.

'Thus I sat in burning discontent and ill-humour until soothed by the scent of roses and the gleam of soft spring sunshine which streamed in through my open window. Some of the flower-beds in the garden were completely carpeted with pansy blossoms, all colours, and violets - blue and white, single and double. The scent of mignonette, jonquils, and narcissi filled the air. I revelled in rich perfumes, and these tempted me forth. My ruffled feelings gave way before the delights of the old garden. I collected a number of vases, and filling them with water, set them on a table in the veranda near one of the drawing-room windows. I gathered lapfuls of the blossoms, and commenced arranging them in the vases.' Miles Franklin My Brilliant Career

vases

How is spring in your corner of the globe?

my own, my beautiful, my blossoming

There are a few precious puffs of blossoms left on the trees and so one last blossom quote


now all the fingers of this tree (darling) have

hands, and all the hands have people; and

more each particular person is (my love)

alive than every world can understand

and now you are and i am now and we're

a mystery which will never happen again,

a miracle which has never happened before -

and shining this our now must come to then

our then shall be some darkness during which

fingers are without hands; and i have no 

you;and all the trees are (any more than each

leafless) its silent in forevering snow

-but never fear (my own, my beautiful

my blossoming)for also then's until

e.e. cummings

blossom

Goodbye blossom - hello peonies

Glorious spring days

A Hosepipe ban has been called and the heavens have opened with more than just April Showers. Maybe the weather will read this passage and bring back glorious sunny days, with rain during the night.


'However, in these glorious spring days the sense of life was too pleasant to be much clouded... The graceful wild clematis festooned the shrubbery along the creeks with great wreaths of magnificent white bloom, which loaded every breeze with perfume; the pretty bright green senna shrubs along the river-banks were decked in blossoms that rivalled the deep blue of the sky in brilliance;... The cry of the leather-heads was heard in the orchard as the cherry season approached. Oh it was good to be alive!' Miles Franklin My Brilliant Career

blossom

How has your spring been?

Hoary with blossom

I'm still in the wonder of blossom.

'As she stood up to go she looked out at the stretch of garden behind the cottage. The newly turned earth was studded with green plants, against the spring sky a plum tree stood up hoary with blossom. Irene's mother looked at the tree and her blue eyes took on a deeper colour.
'It's a wonder, isn't it?' she said. 'When I go up the garden to shake it, so as the blossom shall set, I could fair worship it.' Elizabeth Cambridge Hostages to fortune

blossom

Living in a new area I'm continuously being surprised by new trees giving out their beautiful blossoms. I keep looking at what's happening to the trees after the blossom.  I could fair worship blossom.

The voice of water

I've just finished reading Penelope Fitzgerald's The beginning of spring. As hoped there was a spring quote.

"the first sign of spring that couldn't be mistaken had been a protesting voice, the voice of water, when the ice melted under the covered wooden footpath... the water freed itself by its own effort, and once it had begun to run in a chattering stream, the whole balance of the year tilted over. At the sound of it his heart used to leap. His bicycle came out of the shed... In a few weeks the almond trees would be in flower..." Penelope Fitzgerald The beginning of spring

stream

Do you have a favourite spring time book?

Old-fashioned, fragrant flowers

Now to America and as it's the month of March it had to be from the March family.

'As spring came on, a new set of amusements became the fashion, and the lengthening days gave long afternoons for work and play of all sorts. The garden had to be put in order, and each sister had a quarter of the little plot to do what she liked with... Meg had roses and heliotrope, myrtle, and a little orange-tree in it. Jo's bed was never alike two seasons, for she was always trying experiments; this year it was to be a plantation of sunflowers... Beth had old-fashioned, fragrant flowers in her garden; sweet peas and mignonette, larkspur, pinks, pansies... Amy had a bower in hers... very pretty to look at, - with honeysuckles and morning-glories hanging their coloured horns and graceful wreaths all over it; tall white lilies, delicate ferns, and as many brilliant, picturesque plants as would consent to blossom there." L.M Alcott Little Women

garden

Which sister's garden would yours be most like?

 Mine would, or will hopefully have Jo's experiments, Meg's roses, Beth's sweet-peas and Amy's honeysuckle.

Crooked, twisted, blasted

Rachel at Booksnob  hosted a gentle re read of Sense &Sensibility. I re read it recently for book club so it wasn't the right time for another re read. Here's Edward speaking, or perhaps one should say waffling.

"I like a fine prospect, but not on picturesque principles. I do not like crooked, twisted, blasted trees. I admire them much more if they are tall. straight, and flourishing. I do not like ruined, tattered cottages. I am not fond of nettles, or thistles, or heath blossoms. I have more pleasure in a snug farm-house than a watch-tower..." Jane Austen Sense & Sensibility

cottages

How do you like your trees and houses?

Exploding like popcorn

I've found another blossom quote!

'A kind of brilliant green film suddenly broke over the hills - orchids, spiking the dust, rocks crowned with anemones, almond blossom exploding like popcorn.' Laurie Lee As I walked out one midsummer's morning.

we heart blossom

White Blossom

Elizabeth and her German Garden begins on the 7th May and within this day we have this quote. No wonder I have so many quotes from this book.

'There are so many bird-cherries round me, great trees with branches sweeping the grass, and they are so wreathed just now with white blossoms the tenderest green that the garden looks like a wedding.' Elizabeth von Arnim Elizabeth and her German Garden

And then I found these beautiful wedding images on Once Wed

In these hours

Darling , Dearest Granny died today.

'In these hours when the silence, unfilled by any ceremony, was made almost tangibly oppressive by a sense of absence, only the flowers took the place of the singing and psalms.
They did more than blossom and smell sweet. In unison, like a choir, ... they unstintingly poured out their fragrance and, imparting something of their scented strength in everyone, seemed to be accomplishing a ritual.
The kingdom of plants can easily be thought of as the nearest neighbour of the kingdom of death. Perhaps the mysteries of transformation and enigmas of life which so torment us are concentrated on the green of the earth, among the trees in graveyards and the flowering shoots springing from their beds.' Boris Pasternak Dr. Zhivago

31st July 1918 - 5th May 2011

Where it was always April

The blossom is still just hanging in there and Love in the time of cholera is still in my mind... '...he saw her transfigured in the afternoon shimmer of two o'clock in a shower of blossoms from the almond trees where it was always April regardless of the season of the year.' Gabriel Garcia Marquez Love in the time of Cholera

blossom

Where would you like to be driving to this afternoon?

Coming into Blossom

The blossom trees are truly blossoming... 'There was a smell of all the flowers at once, as if the earth had been unconscious all day long and were now waking. And from the Countess's centuries-old garden, so littered with fallen branches that it was impenetrable, the dusty aromatic smell of old lime trees coming into blossom drifted in a huge wave as tall as a house.' Boris Pasternak Dr. Zhivago

blossom

Do you have any pretty views of blossom near you?

Blossom

So the blossom has finally arrived and I can post this. I've been waiting. I think you've been waiting too. 'every tree appeared to be entirely covered with a waving mass of pink or mauve tissue paper.' Nancy Mitford The Pursuit of Love I like to walk under blossom trees. To look up and see blue sky and the twinkling gold gem of sunlight glistening through. There are certain streets where I know the blossom will be. I stalk them waiting for the first glimpse. I want masses of blossom. Maybe more than one tree. Just in case I can't get my fix some blossom inspiration so it can pervade the whole of life. A clutch for when a coat is still needed but one wants to feel spring like. Welcome to our cherry blossom flat. Where blossom is everywhere. Even the mundane like the door mat. A wall of blossom in the bedroom, or the bathroom. To gaze at contemplate. A lifting of spirits. For days when there's no blossom. Or perhaps I should resist these and stop searching for more images. Store the picture of blossom in my memory. Is blossom so special because it's temporary? We can't catch it. Keep it for ourselves. It needs to stay on the trees. And then stay in our minds until spring time comes once more.