Do not bend

I've just managed to get this piece in the post to my goddaughter April whose birthday was yesterday (sorry!).  It features words from the poem, "Always marry an April girl" by Ogden Nash.

Praise the spells and bless the charms,
I found April in my arms.
April golden, April cloudy.
Gracious, cruel, tender, rowdy;
April soft in flowered langour
April cold with sudden anger,
Ever changing, ever true -
I love April.  I love you.

Thinking of Spring poems, my favourite is by A E Housmann:

Loveliest of Trees

Loveliest of trees the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bow,
And stands about the woodland ride,
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom,
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go,
To see the cherry hung with snow.

Such a reminder to enjoy the beauty of spring, tinged with the weighty reality of our mortality.  It also makes me smile and remember my Grandad, he always talked of his "threescore years and ten" and how he'd be in his box!  He lived until he was ninety one so lived to see a good number of springs.

I've been enjoying the birdsong against our silent skies and have spent the weekend gardening and harvesting our first crops of lettuce, wild garlic, spinach and nettle.