After the rain

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15th April

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

"I heard the nightingale sing, but faintly. This evening I heard the young rooks." Richard Hayes, 1762 (Kent)

"When we were in the woods beyond Gowbarrow park we saw a few daffodils close to the water-side. We fancied that the lake had floated the seeds ashore, and that the little colony had so sprung up. But as we went alon there were more and yet more; at last, under the boughs of the trees, we saw that there was a long belt of them along the shore, about the breadth of a country turnpike road. I never saw daffodils so beautiful. They grew among the mossy stones about and about them; some rested their heads upon these stones as on a pillow for weariness; and the rest tossed and reeled and danced, and seemed as if they were verily laughing with the wind, that blew upon them over the lake; they looked so gay, ever glancing, ever changing. This wind blew directly over the lake to them. There was here and there a little knot, and a few stragglers a few yards higher up; but they were so few as not to disturb the simplicity, unity and life of that one busy highway. Dorothy Wordsworth, 1802 (Westmorland)

"[April 15th?] The half-opened wood-sorrel leaves, the centre or spring of the leaflets dropping back like ears leaving straight-chipped clefts between them, look like some green lettering and cut as sharp as dice." Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1871 (Lancashire)

"A bright hot sun and cold east wind, the sky a deep and wonderful blue and the roads dry... The sun glared blinding upon the white flint road and the white chalkland, and the great yellow dandelions by the roadside stared at the sun." Francis Kilvert, 1874 (Wiltshire)

2009

I love the hedgerows covered in May at this time of year - but it seems to have gone so quickly, and now they're all green! There's still a look of winter to the older trees though...

( A bit more 2009 )

2010

The opposite of the day before - it started off greyly and then turned to sunshine. And though there was a bank of cloud along the horizon, there was nothing particularly spectacular about the "volcanic-ash-sunset" tonight... Byslantedlight, 2010 (Cambs.)