"Well," said the pessimist. "I grant you it all looks fine, but for me, it's too much, too soon. Last year an ancient oak was covered as never in its previous 40 years of my acquaintance with wonderful yellow hanging male flowers. We might have known. Came the frost and all shrivelled and not one, repeat, not one acorn was harvested." So he goes around muttering about it all being very well - while it lasts. Even quoting our monks of the other day "Spring is icy-crisp and cold."
And not 40 yards away from that oak is an ash which has littered the road with what seems like thousands of its spent flowers - for all the world like shrivelled broccoli tips. We are used, of course, to the early flowers or candles of the horse-chestnut. Wonderful in a long avenue such as the main road through the Phoenix Park in Dublin, or as a fine addition to big gardens bordering a road, but damnable in a small garden. Too lush, too big, too fast-growing, too dominant. The sycamore has both leaves and flowers well out. Many trees too early, this layman in the tree world thinks.
He realises he is spooning up honey which is clearly marked "oak honey" in French. You ask Sean Cronin of the Gourmet Shop, Rathgar, and of Woodland Honey from Woodtown, Rathfarnham, the old MacNeill place. He explains that, so early in the year, the bees could get only pollen, not nectar from our Irish oaks. In the South of France, where things are warmer and more advanced, they could already be getting the essential nectar from the oak woods there. Miel de chene, is that a bit of exaggeration on their part? No, they are serious businessmen and oak honey or sweet chestnut honey is just what it says. Back to this country and its hopes of spring. Oak and ash are supposed to be the last to come into leaf, but we are, in these eastern parts, away ahead of ourselves. But a setback in the form of frost is part of the Spring itself. Well might T. S. Eliot write: "April is the cruellest month", for it lulls us with its warmth and growth today, while we know that it's not spring until we've had hail or snow again, to give us perspective. Or even snow into May.
Not even the noisy arrival of the cuckoo signals the end of the humming and hawing. When does he come? John Healy used to tell us that it first sounded in the West some time after April 20th on the slopes of Sliabh Mor, Achill. Y