SPRING is a timeless joy, whether you are girl or boy. It is a pleasure democratically available to all, dweller of city flat, country hall. Spring! Gaudy yellow cowslips trumpet the news. Spring! A word enough to make the heart sing. Spring! When trees unfurl their leaves, butterflies their wings. Spring! When the birds again sing.
Some of my favoured things of spring are commonplace, which is part of their delight —to know that, since the Stone Agers penetrated these isles’ wildwood, we have delighted in them. I adore with the commitment of a disciple the thrush singing matins against April’s celestial blue mornings—as pure as the first day of Creation—and the rabbity-nosed velvet of ash buds. In spring the sap rises, as surely as increasing sun rises the spirits. The fancy of animals turns to fecundity, the thoughts of farmers to spring wheat, but it is all the planting of seed. The birds do it, the bees do it, humans too. According to the Bard in As You Like It:
It was a lover and his lass, With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino
That o’er the green cornfield did pass
In springtime, the only pretty ring time
When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding, Sweet lovers love the spring.
Esta historia es de la edición April 22, 2020 de Country Life UK.
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Save our family farms
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A very good dog
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Best of British
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Old habits die hard
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It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
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