One thing to be thankful for at the moment is that we have a garden, and now, the fact that it is a few minutes’ walk from the house is a boon rather than a burden. The plum tree has blossomed well: maybe this will be one of its glut years.
Today was one of those grim December days where it never seems to get light at all. Ragged and shadowed though it is, this winter flowering cherry blossoms at this time each year in its little courtyard under this fire escape, and does its best to lighten the gloom.
The blossom came out in force over the hot Easter weekend…. and a good chunk of it came down again during the last couple of less clement days. This ephemerality is why people like the Japanese get all sentimental about it, I guess.
Last day in Manchester, certainly, for 33 days. Off tomorrow, on my most significant journey of 2019. So time for this year’s ‘cherry blossom in the Ellen Wilkinson Building’s secret courtyard’, then. I doubt it’ll still be there when I get back.
The blossom is out — very early this year, but with that run of warm weather I guess it was to be expected. But it looks odd against the brown of a hedge that seemed to decide it wasn’t actually going to shed its leaves over the winter.
Anyway I’ve decided this is my homage to Jackson Pollock. It looks a bit like one of his drip paintings. Foliage like this doesn’t half eat up the megabytes, though. Of the 2,750 photos used on this blog — three-quarters of the way through my third millennium — this is the second largest in size, at 3.4Mb, that I’ve ever uploaded (most of them come in at about 1 – 1.5Mb). The largest? This one — also with lots of foliage, proving the point…
They’re very pink, but very ephemeral, the cherry blossoms. Maybe that’s why the Japanese like them so much, it matches their general aesthetic.
OK, maybe I didn’t take the picture on May Day. But that’s when I’m posting it, so it still seems appropriate. Let’s hope spring is here to stay now.
Back to cold, rainy weather. But if I keep posting pictures of spring perhaps when I look back I will remember this as a warm April morning. The blossom is out in ‘my’ courtyard at work, at least, but back in 2014 (for example) it looked like this in February. A sign of the lateness of the weather patterns this year.
An inactive day, even indolent, but this was much needed. Sunny later, with the promise of spring in the air and look, Japan — we have blossoms too!
More avifauna. And a pic that shows we are at least a couple of weeks ahead with various signs of the seasons this year, to compare with last (see 29/5/13).
Being 42 