Spring – When Life Gives You Lemons

Little Flags of Hope

**Miniature daffodils**
Image: Karen Costello-McFeat

By mid February, my love of winter is waning. I’ve had enough of wind and rain and mud; of being swathed in layers of thermals and woollens. I long, instead, for floral dresses and the warmth of the sun.

It’s been a hard winter emotionally too. Week after week, I hear of ill-health or tragedy encompassing those I care about. I am ready for something more positive. Though I cannot in any way change the cycle of news in my own milieu nor the world, at least I can rely on Nature to wave her floral flags that semaphore hope is on the horizon.

Mimics

The first flowers to arrive in my garden were the paperwhites and snow drops; their pale blooms mimicking the frost so recently passed. Then, as the sun’s strength increases, the flowers take some colour from its hue and daffodils, crocus, primroses and forsythia take their places.

When I did my daily perambulation of my yard today, I could not believe how much more was in flower. Last week, there was almost nothing, and today a great array.

A tiny primrose sheltering under the step.
Image: Karen Costello-McFeat

Let there be light

As every housewife knows, the clear sparkling light of early spring is a mixed blessing. Whilst the garden basks in its newfound beauty, the home is illuminated in all its less than perfect state. Cobwebs and dust concealed by winter dark and low lighting, suddenly come into focus. If the garden were not such a lure, I am sure that I would get on with more cleaning.

Instead, I drink my morning coffee in the kitchen and admire the mini rainbows cast upon the table as the light is filtered through the stained glass. I look outside and see the leaves of the great Austrian pine silvered with sunlight. I inhale the scent of paperwhites I have brought inside. Such perfume is wasted on the open air, I reason.

**Much more fragrant than furniture polish**
Image: Karen Costello-McFeat

Revivals

And it is not just me who is revived by the abundance of life unfurling all around me, the birds too are becoming noisier. The skies are filled with crows, their ragged wings rowing through the limpid air. Mr and Mrs Magpie come each day to haunt my garden and feast on the abundance of insects just now hatching in their millions. Out front, my beech hedge, with dead curled leaves, still hosts dozens of sparrow who choir to each other relentlessly. I know they are in there – but they are impossible to see.

**Perfect camouflage – even in winter**
Image: Karen Costello-McFeat

Fickle February

February is the month of lovers, and like lovers, it can be fickle. One day, you bask in its admiring glow, the wind a warm caress upon your face; the next, it has withdrawn all its affection, leaving you cold and disheartened.

Though in future weeks, winter may yet claw back its jealous hold, its days are numbered. The season is moving as insistently as an incoming tide, ever forward. Each day a little lighter; each day a little warmer.

And each joyful bloom reminds us this is so. Spring hopes – eternal.

Hold On. It’s Almost Here

Just when you think that winter will never relinquish its icy grip, along comes February with its rapidly lengthening days and exuberant spring flowers. Despite being a short month, it is filled with celebrations: Chinese New Year, Candlemas, Valentine’s and later the carnival season. But the one that best captures this pivotal point between the seasons is the lesser known Imbolc.

**Tiny harbingers** Image: Karen Costello-McFeat

Imbolc

I had never heard of it before my lovely art teacher wished me a happy one. My curiosity peeked, I had to look it up and discovered that if there were possible to have a festival tailored to one’s passions, this was it. Imbolc is a celebration of all things natural with a little culture thrown in for good measure.

Traditionally celebrated by the Celts (Irish and Scots) it was a pagan holiday that started on sundown of Feb 1 and ended 24 hours later. This date marks the half-way point between the winter and spring equinox. From here, though winter may still demonstrate its power with late snow and bitter frosts, the world is turning towards the sun and winter’s reign is reaching its conclusion.

**Vibrant narcissus**
Image: Karen Costello-McFeat

In pre-Christian times, it celebrated the goddess Brigid ‘who was evoked in fertility rites and oversaw poetry, crafts and prophesy.’ (History.com) And she was later absorbed into the Catholic canon as St Brigid, where she continued her patronage of culture, healing and husbandry.

Modern pagans use the date as an opportunity to celebrate the newly waking natural world and culture. As the landscape becomes stippled with the yellows, whites and pinks of spring, it would be churlish not to join them in observing this annual miracle.

**Delicate paper whites in their spring colours**
Image: Karen Costello-McFeat

Having admired the blooms and spears of green in my garden, I plan to spend the evening with some poetry. Crafts are always on my to-do list. With Brigid in mind, despite the single figure temperatures of today, I predict that spring will be upon us in no time at all.

The Darling Buds of May

**Apple blossom** Image: Karen Costello-McFeat

Wandering about the garden and admiring the blossoms and new buds, I could not help but think of these immortal lines. Many of us will have studied this sonnet in school, but I think that it is worth revisiting. Whilst Shakespeare was clearly writing a very flattering portrait of his patron, he also touches on some truths that might aid us in these uncertain times.

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
   So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
   So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

William Shakespeare

**A surviving tulip** Image: Karen Costello-McFeat

Rough winds

As in many parts of the country, the beginning of the month was marked by extremely high winds. We live at the top of the hill, so their force is felt even more strongly here. One night, we wrestled in the garden furniture and retreated to the safety of our home. The next morning, our beautiful swathes of red tulips were no more – only the slender stems that had supported them. The lawn was covered in blossom confetti and the trees, so richly dressed the day before, were naked save their vibrant, unfurling leaves.

The same happens every year. Our fruit trees entice the pollinators with their delicate blooms. The wind decimates them. And often life seems to behave in the same way. No sooner have we found our perfect place, than something comes along to destroy it: an ailing relative, our own health, life struggles.

Yet, more often than not, during the brief spell of their existence, the blossoms are pollinated and though the flower may be gone, the fruit is set to grow and thrive. The previous decade of my life has felt more like a hurricane than just rough winds. At times, it seemed that there was nothing more that could be stripped away. Only somehow, like the blossom, I had been ‘pollinated’ with a sense of acceptance and gratitude; that despite the storms of life, there is so much to live for. It is only when we are challenged, sometimes to the very limits of our being, that we can grow. My mind is much calmer now than ever before and equally, I have never enjoyed the natural world in all its guises so much. Though cold and rain are not my favourites, they only whet my appetite for spring and they are as vital to nature’s cycles as sunshine.

**Clematis** Image: Karen Costello-McFeat

Every fair from fair sometime declines

May is the month of clematis for me: that gorgeous, bountiful herald of summer. After months of anticipation, the buds finally open and a cascade of flowers appear. But they do not last long – a few weeks at most. Like all beauty, it is transient and all the more precious for that.

In Japan, the cherry blossom festival (Hanami), was derived from earlier tree worship. Emperor Saga (reign: 809-823) is attributed with establishing the more modern celebration in which flowers were admired, poems written and picnics enjoyed outdoors. And the idea of transience is at its heart. The flowers, like life, are short-lived. Here is a charming set of haiku to give you a flavour of Hanami.

Drinking up the clouds
it spews out cherry blossoms –
Yoshino Mountain.

Wind blows
they scatter and it dies
fallen petals

Petals falling
unable to resist
the moonlight

Sakura, sakura
they fall in the dreams
of sleeping beauty

Josa Buson

**Ornamental cherry** Image: Karen Costello-McFeat

Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade

Though we cannot, like Shakespeare’s muse, be immortalised in his verse, our brief lives do not end with us. Perhaps we have children who will pass on our genetic code; perhaps we have positively touched the lives of others and they revive us each time we are remembered. For though our transient state is sometimes frightening, it is no different from the cycles of the seasons.

So what can we take away from this? First, surely, is seize the day. Enjoy life’s bounty while you can. Second, for all our incredible intelligence and technologies, we are still carbon based life-forms. In the same way that energy cannot be destroyed, only transformed, matter too is not destroyed but only reconfigured. So that even when our physical being ends, and our composite parts are broken down to their atoms, we will not disappear but rather recombine to make new, living things. Who knows? Perhaps the atoms that make up me will join others to make spring blossoms of the future. I certainly hope so.

**Floral reincarnation?** Image: Karen Costello-McFeat

Celebrating the Season

Of all the seasons, spring is definitely my favourite. From around mid January, I start yearning for the Earth to wake up, to display all the delicious blooms and blossoms it has been cultivating in the dark for months. This year my longing for spring has been especially acute, but at last it is almost here.

The first day of spring varies from whether you take a meteorological point of view or an astrological one. (How confusing!?) The meteorologists mark it as the 1st of March and the season ends neatly on the 31 May. It’s the same every year and convenient to measure. Astrologically, though, the beginning of spring varies a tiny bit. Here spring is marked from the occurrence of the vernal equinox -when the sun crosses over the equator and begins its steady climb northward. As the Northern Hemisphere is now tilted in the direction of the sun, the days will become warmer and lighter.

Here comes the sun! Image: Patrick on Unsplash

For me, the second makes most sense, tied as it is to Nature’s rather than Man’s calendar. Though we already have some spring flowers – little flags of hope – true spring is not yet with us. Only when the sun is firmly in our quadrant, can we look forward with some certainty to warmer, longer days ahead. This year, spring arrives on Saturday 20th and I am making plans to welcome it.

Spring festival

Spring has been celebrated since time immemorial. And with good reason. Surviving winter in the past was no mean feat: starvation and sickness were the hallmarks of the season. In Poland, where winters are particularly harsh, their spring festival involves a parade carrying a straw effigy of Marzanna – goddess of winter, plague and death – which ends with its ritual drowning in the river. This symbolic death of winter makes way for the the life-giving hope of spring.

In warmer climes, spring is welcomed with exuberance. In India, Holi is celebrated with a riot of colour – mainly on other people. In Japan, families sit under the frothy profusion of cherry blossom, enjoying picnics and this ethereal, passing beauty. In Persia, they begin Nowruz, their New Year. I used to go to a gorgeous Persian cafe in town, which brought the celebration to its customers – including goldish in an ornate bowl, sprouting seeds and, it goes without saying, delicious food.

Goldfish are symbols of life Image: Ahmed Rizkhaan on Unsplash

In the West, of course, our spring festival is encapsulated in Easter. Spring was originally called Lent – a shortened version of the Old English Lencten or the lengthening of days. It became bound with the forty days of reflection and preparation for Christ’s resurrection on Easter Sunday which we call Lent today. The more secular spring became fixed by the sixteenth century. And I like that the season contains both associations.

A time of growth

For true renewal to take place, we need to shed our old layers – literally and metaphorically. As the spring sunshine points out all the accumulated dust and dirt acquired over the winter season, we are prompted to spring clean, washing, dusting, emptying cupboards and discarding the old and the worn.

We may resurrect our spring clothes from boxes in the loft or purchase new ones; we may invest in bigger purchases with the optimism that they will bring a new life of sorts too.

But if we focus only on the material, we are missing the opportunity to spring clean our minds and spirits. Though I do not observe Lent in the traditional sense, I have used this time to increase my meditation and spiritual practice. I am trying (and struggling) with forgiveness. I’ve lived long enough to have been hit by plenty of the ‘slings and arrows’ not only of misfortune but insensitivity, unkindness or indifference. And these are burdens – dark spaces that lurk within me. Spring provides the perfect opportunity to open the windows wide and let the sunlight in. A spring clean of the soul will bring more joy than any tidy cupboard, no matter how well organised.

A time of flowering

My favourite definition of spring is ‘to burst forth’ – as water does from its underground stream; as a coil does when released; as a bulb does once it has pushed its way through the burnt umber earth to explode in the brilliance of the hyacinth or narcissus.

And we too can become these blooms – radiant and giving. Mehmet Murat Ildan put it rather wonderfully when he said, ‘When you smell a spring flower, it’s as if the soul of that flower settles inside you! And then you become that flower for a short time!” It is time to smell the flowers, for a flower is never a bad thing to be.

Its beauty is there for everyone to enjoy. It holds no grudge against the hand that picks it, for spring flowers regather their strength in their bulbs to return next year. Winds buffet them, but they bend and nod their heads. If we learn from them, and take their cue, our spring can be a real opportunity for renewal and rebirth. Part of my spring ritual involves gathering these blooms and inhaling their scent. They will be at the centre of my spring celebration on Saturday. That and planting seeds. It’s time.