May 2011
5 posts
5 tags
May, Willow Seeds
Willow seeds, snug in their cotton wool cocoons have been filling the air like a blizzard. Everything is white, covered in these flighty little puffs of nothingness. It’s not the dazzling, coloured, reflecting white of snow. It’s more like the dull paleness of dust and it gets caught in cobwebs, snarled up round the stems of things, settles in flowers and balances wobbling on...
5 tags
May, Flowers
I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxslips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine;
There sleeps Titania sometime of the night,
Lulled in these flowers with dances and delight;
And there the snake throws her enamelled skin,
Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in.
There’s a place under a huge blossomed...
7 tags
May, Caterpillers.
It started as a small white silken triangle slung between two slender branches of a hawthorn bush about a month ago. I wondered if it was full of spiders? Would a splendid butterfly emerge from it? Then it began to grow. Every day it got a tiny bit bigger and everyday I became more intrigued by it. Eventually, I realised it was full of minuscule caterpillars. As the days went on I watched their...
9 tags
May, Dandelions
Dandelions, in one plant you have the sun and the moon. The yellow flowers are bright and sunny and en mass create a glow that can reflect off tree trunks and turn pristine white blossom strangely blue. They close at night as if mirroring their deity, the sun. And later, the delicate seed heads have always reminded me of the moon. With an ethereal glow as you walk through them at night,...
5 tags
The Mysterious Sex Life of Ash Trees
I’m confused by ash trees. I know that some are male and some are female. I know that they can change sex. I know that some can be both sexes at the same time. In early March I look forward to the great, big, black buds of what I thought were the female trees. The way they burst open into perfect little corals of translucent green tinged with purple. I imagine their sweet taste as I watch...
