Second Spring

 

Reblooming rosebush along with rosemary..

           Stop Awhile to Smile

Second spring seems to wreath

Earth’s skin instead of autumn.

Songbirds sing and bees visit

Flowers adorning leaves auburn.

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Trees sprouting catkins, as if

Winter isn’t imminent, and energy

Best invested in building up

Stores to see it through in utility.

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I, too, should be inside, busy 

Through fall with words, building

For stores ‘ere the festive season.

But I’ll pause here as ev’ning’s gilding

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Landscape lying ‘neath green veneer,

To fill a vital store of good cheer.

A horse-chestnut tree in full bloom even as some leaves are falling and the chestnuts are nearly all dropped. Bumblebees taking full advantage of the misstep, though.

So we’ve had what they call a little summer of St Martin… except it was a heatwave. We were up in the thirties every day for over a week, but since it’s October, it cooled during the longer nights down to the teens. And it seems some trees etc think it’s spring again, with the balanced hours of sun and the high temps. So stuff is spouting. Dandelions are dandy, but trees are just wasting energy.

Catkins on a walnut tree with mature nuts ready to eat, and leaves losing their vitality.

The scenes, however, since we’ve had some rain in September so I just soaked it all up instead of working, which I should be, to re-edit and republish my first five adult novels.

More on that before Christmas!

Life is short. And it seems even the trees think so.

Cones on a spruce in October. Pretty sure this is not normal timing.

They say the weather is going to change today. I think it already has.

Slowing down Spring

A path dividing a wheat and a oilseed rape field filled with flowers and insects under a rain-heavy sky.

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            Slowing Down Spring

Leaden heavy clouds lay upon the land,

Slowing its spin, it seems, the wind

Whistling chill, winds back spring:

So all pauses, apparently, and allows us,

Perhaps, appreciate all a little longer:

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Continued calling of song thrushes,

Tree-creepers, warblers and woodpeckers;

The candle cones perched upon pines;

Chandeliers of chestnut blooms

Letting petals swirl to gather in drifts

And dropping fruits of tiny infant seeds;

New green sprigs on twigs of spruce trees;

Dandelions, the sign of spring, still

The dominant design of spring,

Drawing swarms of insects, revived

As running rivers; glowing gloss and

Ripples of graining barley, regaining

The aspect of May in Spain; golden

Sunspots, when rays sneak out of clouds,

That simply seep into souls like

Helium to help them soar…

Making every day a delayed delight

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We might not see for many more:

As spring shortens ever more and

Assimilates to frightful summer 

Sooner than we’re prepared for.

Rainbow marks the return of the sun, to fields not fully seeded from the earlier drought. We got a storm that dropped a lot of water this weekend which hopefully has saved the harvestt.

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We had a few weeks with cooler temperatures, which was a big relief, even in Navarra. Not so much rain in many places, but it gave us time to really see the green before it turns to gold. Which it was threatening to too soon this hear – to dusty tan and brown, too. And it seems spring will shorten as we go forward into climate chaos.

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Of course, in our village the verges went brown after the council yet again sprayed it with glyphosphate… And one local farmer did the same to his field verges, which just ruins my day as I cycle up the hill…

It’s just ugly, apart from idiotic etc… But it runs a brown line all the way up… in an area which has a natural park and is advertised to tourists to go hiking and mushroom picking in the forests above these fields…