Blossom

Spring blossom doesn't last for long. A gust of wind and then it's like there's been a wedding with natural pink and white confetti blowing all over the place. But for a short while - five or six days - the trees that blossom are festooned, bedecked, garlanded with tender little flowers. Such a small window of opportunity for pollination.

I particularly love this time of year when the Earth is not just reawakening, it is already coming down the staircase. New growth is everywhere. Leaves are fresh and untainted. Insect numbers are only just starting to increase. There's grass to be cut, edges to be strimmed and hedges to clip.

It's been so dry here recently. Last night after Shirley and I had been down the pub, I was up the garden with my box of matches like a drunken pyromaniac. Last autumn, I had pruned a couple of trees and carefully stacked up the branches and twigs for a night like last night - a crescent moon sinking over the rooftops and just a hint of breeze.

The bonfire crackled as little golden tongues of flame sought to ignite old branches, then "whoosh!" a great mother of a multicoloured flame rose maybe twenty feet above the peak of the bonfire structure, twisting and roaring. I watched the show from an abandoned plastic garden chair, suckling on a bottle of Italian lager. Burning leaves, lifted from the inferno made delicate snaking necklace shapes in the night sky.

Saturday night in Springtime - good to be alive - taking as much sleep as I wish without a clock nagging me to hurry on. Then today, Sunday, I went out hunting for a new barbecue because the other one finally succumbed to rust and metal fatigue. Found a new one at "Tesco". It was flat-packed. Putting it together really required four hands but I only have two. It was flopping about and the instructions had certain deliberate omissions just to make your blood boil but after one hour & forty minutes I had finally mastered the beast... ready for the sultry summer evenings that global warming promises.