Meandering paths of green

Mermaid, palmetto, celadon, viridian and mintleaf: Steven Lovatt gets lost on a pleasurable wander through Nature, language and many shades of green

- Steven Lovatt

IT was on a mid-February morning that a westerly brought the first hints of spring. Since then, despite hesitancy and downright back-tracking—snow at Easter, a sheen of dew each April dawn— the hints have become a pledge, something to hang our hopes on after a frightful year.

On that first morning of promise, I sat with my back against the abandoned bowling pavilion, eyes screwed tight to the rising sun, and listened to the birdsong from the surrounding trees, mingled with the dog walkers’ ritual pleasantries. When I’d warmed up, lizard-like, and the pink glow behind my eyelids had become uncomfortably bright, I walked down to the little ornamental strip that’s fenced off from the rest of the park. There’s a streamlet here, landscaped long ago down some mossy steps for the soothing plash, and also a stand of bamboo and some exotic trees. Around all these had sprung up, seemingly overnight, an ecumenical array of snowdrops and crocuses. The pure white snowdrops depended over the grass and the crocuses, all different confessions of yellow and purple, stood proud in their little mitres.