17th April

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

"Hay is become very scarce and dear indeed! My rick is now almost as slender as the waist of a virgin; and it would have been much for the reputation of the last two brides that I have married, had their waists been as slender... The first swallow that I heard of was on April 6th., the first nightingale April 13th. The great straddle-bob, Orion, that in the winter seems to bestride my brew-house, is seen now descending of an evening, on one side foremost behind the hanger." Gilbert White, 1786 (Hampshire)

"I saw a robin chasing a scarlet butterfly this morning." Dorothy Wordsworth, 1802 (Westmorland)

"Saw a shoal of salmon in the river and many hares on the open hills. Under a stone hedge was a dying ram: there ran slowly from his nostril a thick flesh-coloured ooze, scarlet in places, coiling and roping its way down, so thick that it looked like fat... Magnetic weather, sunlight soft and bright, colours of fells and fields far off seeming as if dipped in watery blue." Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1873 (Lancashire)


Another grey and damp morning, but it wasn't actually raining and the birds were very loud as I walked along the road. And Little Tree is looking very green these days!


... the cloud lightened though, and this evening the world was looking more promising still.
Byslantedlight, 2009 (Cambs.)

I've got to say though, today's the first time I've wanted to smack our diarists' fingers with a very snappy ruler indeed... Anyone want to bet that Gilbert White didn't exactly have the finest figure the last two times he was a groom? The bloody constance of men, eh - coming out with the same old garbage for over 200 years! And there we were, tra-la-la-ing away with old Gerard with his sparkling salmon streams, and beautiful English hillsides with bunnies hopping... and then... its worse than a butcher's! *headdesk*