What a difference a month makes!

Can there be a bigger seasonal change than that between spiteful late winter and full blown, sleeping with the windows open,  hot summer?

4th of May was snow. I ran around the garden knocking it off full leaved willows and birches bowed down to the ground with the weight of it. As the first sprinkle of snow in the photo became a blizzard I closed the blind, unable to bear the sight of my my newly flourishing garden disappearing under the ever thickening blanket.

It lay thick for a night, but the next day it was gone like a bad dream and this 4th June it is 33 degrees and too hot to go out until the sun set.  The roses are thick clustered and lip stick pink, the columbines are extraordinary in their variety, the irises are perfect and perfumed with sherbet, the peonies are exploding from their tightly encircling buds, the hedgehog is out feeding in the dusk and I even heard a cuckoo calling unmistakably from the meadows.

This evening is perfect and would have been my mother’s 90th birthday. Happy birthday Mum, all these flowers are for you.

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