"What a wonderful world" Louis Armstrong sang. And suddenly, last weekend it was. After the blasts which stopped Spring in its first blossoming, which cut leaves to shrivelled tatters, which blasted flowers, everything burst out. It was as if the wise trees and shrubs had been holding back and then, pouring forth that pent-up energy, showed us a May that lived up to all the poets' expectations. Fields in Meath bordered in white, as if the hawthorn was covered in clean sheets of linen. And more: some of the bigger fields had half a dozen plump bushes, all white, scattered across their acres, all clad to the ground. And some roadsides, especially where bordered with trees, were four feet or so deep in the white, fragile blooms of wild parsley and other plants. Most surprising of all, a young oak, about twenty or twenty one years old, which had borne, recently, one or two measly acorns, had, in a few days, burst out in the most prolific and golden blossoms of all. In a couple of days, it seemed. Dripping, the tree was, with them.
The beech this year, as always, seem to have the most delicate green of all, and they are many. Bird life: marital peace is disturbed when one partner insists on setting the alarm clock (an unusually quiet one) to enjoy the dawn chorus. And speaking of birds, the same partner says she spent some minutes beside a sparsely-leafed bush in which she counted up to a dozen tiny, young wrens. Now this is a puzzle. For Cabot tells us the wren lays five to six eggs. Another source says five to eight. We are also told that the male wren builds two nests, and moves the first brood to the second nest while the female in the original nest incubates the second brood. Could these be the two broods already hatched and fledged?
Anyway, while the kingfisher is still on the river there are for the first year, no wagtails. No flycatchers arrived yet. The swallows have so far not taken to work on their old nests. And, of course, the wild duck has vanished. No fire needed in the grate for the first time, and the lovely ash logs wait for another day.
"There is no time like Spring/ When life's alive in everything" wrote Christiana Rossetti. Of course, it's really Summer, isn't it? Anyway: "What a wonderful world."