As winter bites us once again, spring is fighting through
Tomorrow brings the spring equilux, the moment two days before the actual equinox itself, when the hours of day and night become exactly equal.
Such is the weather being forecast that you may hardly notice: bitterly cold and windy, I’m afraid, with snow and sleet showers. In the south and east this may prove disruptive. Into next week expect fog and frost.
“A Cold Spring” wrote Elizabeth Bishop in her 1955 poem of the same name. “The violet was flawed on the lawn. For two weeks or more the trees hesitated.”
And I found myself thinking this week about the flowers that define the start of spring. For Elizabeth Bishop it was violets, but I believe everybody has a particular flower, or indeed wild scent, that heralds winter being done and dusted.
On Thursday I found myself at the foot of Snowdon, which was studded with clumps of daffodils that had already dutifully sprouted up through the snow for St David’s Day.
I have had reports of star-shaped lesser celandine in the woodlands near my house. On the street verges crocuses are beginning to come out in spite of the cold.
Obviously there are snowdrops to mention too, although I personally rule them out as I feel they belong to winter.
My favourite of the spring flowers, however, is the hyacinth. When I was little there was a patch in the wild bit of my parents’ back garden which incidentally backed on to an old Second World War Anderson shelter that my brother and I used to explore.
Every year a few white hyacinths would sprout out among the bluebells. The shelter is gone now (although considering events in Russia that may have been a little premature), as are the hyacinths. I still think of them each spring, though, especially on grim days like these.