Come One Spring Morning!

Come One Spring Morning!

I step gingerly outside my kitchen door. I know I should go back for my stick but I am captivated by what is laid out before me, like artwork painted with the skilled brush strokes of a giant’s hand.

Looking round, I take in the riches being offered by this beautiful, crisp, spring morning. I hear a newly formed choir of birds singing in joyful chorus, welcoming me to their morning rehearsal. But Mother Nature, it seems, is not yet ready to show the world her most prized possessions, her orchestra of flowers, keeping them, for the moment, under their protective silver dust sheets that glisten in the morning sun.

The plants themselves give no more than a promise of some latent beauty but new life is everywhere. The once flattened grass looks springy and green underneath its protective, silver layer. And as I walk about the garden, my footsteps make a crunching sound, like ice crackling on a frozen pond.

The daffodils look almost ready, with their flower heads full ripe, and ready to burst. They may stand ready but must wait until…with a flourish…The Conductor raises her baton and the daffodils begin their overture to spring. Soft creams make way for vibrant, exuberant yellows before culminating in a cascading crescendo of colour…

The softer first movement of the tulips take up the tune and blossom into a great symphony that makes one look first here, then there, as each tulip adds its own virtuoso piece that transports me on a journey through layers and levels of colour that only The Conductor, Mother Nature, can provide.

As I crunch my way around the garden my hair is gently brushed by silver doilies left unoccupied by generous spiders. Then, when I eventually come to the bench by the pond, I brush the frost dust away and sit down and wait for my morning companion, imagination, to join me.

I see the music of spring slowly and reluctantly make way for summer’s sonata to burst in to a song of colourful flowers that, when open, will lift the spirit but I must wait patient before The Conductor, once more, raises her baton and allows me to enjoy the riches of her work.

The first to strike up are the alpine section, creating a riot of colour coming mainly from the rockery perennials, such as the wall covering aubrietias and the cloth of gold saxifrage moving into the alyssums and helianthemums with the violas joining this orchestral symphony of colour when summoned by The Conductor.

Not waiting for them to die away before she raises her baton for the border perennials to add their distinctive contribution to summer’s grand symphony. The delicate aquilegias followed by the alstroemerias take up the song of summer before they too make way for autumn’s generous offering.

The asters and chrysanthemums adding a deeper rhythm of autumnal shades to summer’s fading hues as The Conductor allows this rhapsody of colour to fade slowly into winter’s evergreen, but soft and final movement of regeneration, until we come once more to the concert of flowers provided by Mother Nature one spring morning!