Instructions on Not Giving Up

Instructions on Not Giving Up

More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out

of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s

almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving

their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate

sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees

that really gets to me. When all the shock of white

and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave

the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,

the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin

growing over whatever winter did to us, a return

to the strange idea of continuous living despite

the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,

I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf

unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.

Ada Limón 

On the South Bank of the Thames, in the Cold Spring Sunshine

After a visit to Tate Modern, which surprisingly wasn't irredeemably awful (they've reorganised their stuff since I was last there, so that it makes a little more sense, including putting some of the things I don't hate in the same spaces - like a gallery on 'Realisms' which chimes with Christine Lindey's course on The Alternative Tradition, a little), I came out into the Spring sunshine to see these two  chaps eating fire and juggling:

Which was quite fun. 

I then did something I rarely do: the tide was out, so I went down to the beach; the real South Bank of the Thames, if you will.

The Shard seems small and unimportant from this angle, compared with the expanse of the River and the rest of London.  And there is a wealth of stuff down at water level you don't see from up on the embankment.

And of course, the River itself is closer.

...while the bridges are... up there.

The red piers from the old, 1864 Blackfriars Bridge are especially impressive from the waterline.

While the Millennium Footbridge (no longer so bouncy) was very busy on the day...

And finally, just like almost every other cultural barn in London in the last ten years, Tate Modern is getting a new bit built...

Growing Argonath

I mentioned Nunhead's own Argonath a few years back.  They have often seemed small and stunted. 

However, possibly as a result of all of the recent rain, they seem to be sprouting!  Lots of tender green growth from the tips of the branches.

Go and have a look...

Sunnier

That same tree on the Rye, same time of day, two weeks later...

Poem of the Week

Spring
Gerard Manley Hopkins

Nothing is so beautiful as spring—
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.

What is all this juice and all this joy?
A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden.—Have, get, before it cloy,
Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,
Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.

Nunhead Spring

And so it was a lovely Summer Spring Sunday in Nunhead, which meant a bacons sandwich in Bambuni's.  Grin.

And a brief stroll around the Green.

Magnolia in bloom...

And Japanese cherry...

 And the chinese willow is just beginning...

Yesterday in the Garden

Yesterday was a smashing Spring day, so lunch was a picnic...

... with bluebells...

 ... the birch showing off its catkins...

 ... oh, and our romantic dead tree...

Spring Evening on the Rye

Cold Spring Garden Sun

There's a hidden sadness about that first picture above. It shows where the kids' climbing frame was, before their nasty parents sold it...

Spring Garden

So it is finally a day that feels like Spring in the garden.  Things are growing.

The pond is full of little creatures wriggling in the frogspawn.

The rosemary is flowering.

By the Elephant

There are trees all over London, of course. And if you look closely, many of them are now just coming into bud.

Yesterday in the garden

So, it being a sunny spring day yesterday and us beginning to start Easter holidays, I wandered into the garden to take some photogaphs. I've presented these as small, but the some of the higher-res images look quite attractive to my aesthetically-challenged sensibilities...