Thursday, April 19, 2007

bluebells, garden, seagulls

Bluebells need shade, which is why, for the most part, they grow in woods. But sometimes you see them round the bowl of a single tree, where they survive like blue shadows.

From the train train window the countryside looks to me like a garden. Hawthorn, also known as May, because of the month in which it usually flowers, is already draping the hedgerows with white. Despite the speed of the train, I identify: primroses, wood anemones, ramsons or wild garlic, stitch wort, gorse and of course bluebells in the woods.

I watch seagulls glide into the wind above the front in Hastings. They ride into the wind overhead, until they almost come to a halt, before wheeling and swooping away. As I watch the gulls, I see, through the glass door of the restaurant outside which we are sitting, a gull of a pale milky colour, almost ghost-like. It is the reflection of a gull in the glass, a strange contrast, but one which for confused me for a few seconds.

3 comments:

Fire Bird said...

Yes, the May flowering in mid-April was given as but one illustration of the speeding up of climate change, on a feature this week on the Today programme . Swifts are arriving early too.

Lucas said...

Very much enjoying these observations and the haiku earlier.
Hawthorn is white, is also called May and can also be pink. I once heard that the white is Hawthorn and the red is May. And the fruit are red.

herhimnbryn said...

Thankyou for the Bluebell shadows.