#cowslips

Ox-eye daisies, ribwort plantain, red clover, and cowslips (gone to seed) in a road verge

Photo credit: Eleanor Chua.

Source: small_beautiful_moments

It was Sunday again… already! And it was another fine, dry, bright and sunny day in the wild west Highlands of Scotland, but, as Algy discovered, the air was cold and the wind was remarkably chilly, and altogether it did not feel anything like as warm and inviting as it looked…

But it was spring nonetheless: plants were bursting into fresh green growth all over the garden, trees and shrubs were starting to flower, the great white cherry blossom was buzzing with bees, and the birds were exceedingly busy in the bushes and – Algy hoped – in the nest boxes which his assistants had installed especially for their use 😀

Collecting a volume of poetry from his own personal library, Algy tried to find a suitable place in which to relax and indulge in his usual Sunday reading, but many of his favourite spots felt too cold. Eventually, however, he settled down upon a sunny slope where a patch of cowslips had just begun to flower, and opened his book of verse, which was devoted to poems about the four seasons. Turning the pages, he was rather surprised to see a poem by D H Lawrence:

This spring as it comes bursts up in bonfires green, Wild puffing of emerald trees, and flame-filled bushes, Thorn-blossom lifting in wreaths of smoke between Where the wood fumes up and the watery, flickering rushes. I am amazed at this spring, this conflagration Of green fires lit on the soil of the earth, this blaze Of growing, and sparks that puff in wild gyration, Faces of people streaming across my gaze. And I, what fountain of fire am I among This leaping combustion of spring? My spirit is tossed About like a shadow buffeted in the throng Of flames, a shadow that's gone astray, and is lost.

Tuft of Cowslips (1526) by Albrecht Dürer (Germany, 1471–1528).

Gouache on vellum.