Nature in April

Tony Kelly (mid April 1979):

At last the rain has stopped and the air has been warm, even hot, and full of insects and birdsong. Slowly, and it seems very slowly, the faded yellow of the matted grass is becoming greener as the new shoots push their way through, and all over it on its peculiarly smoothed surface, thousands of little wolf spiders run about in search of food. Two of them pounce on each other, realise their mistake and make off in different directions. In the stream, green filaments of algae are beginning to weave outwards from the under-water stones and a darker species bubbles away in the dwindling pools of the hollows. There's a new growth of leaves on the kale that the Winter devastated, and tiny specks of green on the hazels and the hawthorn and a few more warm days will bring the leaves which indeed are already appearing on the spindle trees. There are bright new leaves of wood sorrel under the hedges and the tips of the new fronds of the maidenhair spleenwort among the old fronds on the ancient mortar of the old stone wall, and a withered-looking hart's tongue fern that decided to be almost deciduous this Winter. Of flowers there's scarcely a sign; the snowdrops are fading now and the daffodils are just opening their flower buds and the blue and purple flowers of lungwort are adorning a migrant rhubarb patch. But the Sun rides high, there are moths aplenty, birdsong in the air, and a jackdaw is hacking away at a slate on our roof while another is bringing presents of firewood and dumping them on the bed, all of which is to say that the warm weather is coming and, in a day or two, even the trees will dress in their finery to welcome the Goddess of the Summer.

Nature in April

Greg Hill (April 1979):

I went out to the wild places to see where the Spring had come, and where she was still biding her time in the closed bud's seclusion, and guarding warmth yet beneath the folded petals.  The Earth was soft in the wooded cwm and I stood on a rock in the rushing stream while the waters flowed around me.  To one side the bank was full of bright green leaves of wood-garlic, on the other the grey rock was piled high and clothed with a hundred shades of green and yellow from the many mosses that grow there - as beautiful and exotic a garden as one could wish for.  Back on the bank I saw a single flower of wood-anemone showing bright yellow stamens in the white petals though the leaves were still unfolded.  And yellow was the colour that speckled the green of the roadside verges, with coltsfoot in the gravelly place and daffodils by the garden paths and dandelion and celandine under the bare twigs on the hedges.  But not yet is the day come when the banks are brighted with as much yellow as there is green and primroses grace the woodland floor and the trees are a rustle of wind-blown leaves.
   So I watched for a while from my high window over the wood and my heart called out again to go to the place of trees: to see my lady there.  Her green cowl about her brown hair, she walks through the grey woods.  She treads a path of ragged leaves and petals open as she goes, yellow buds unfold on every green stem.  She casts her green cloak over the brown land and the woods come alive to look upon her.  Her dewy skin as soft as lady-fern leaves, and moist like a buttercup looks in the morning grass.  The Wind sighs as her scent sails on the morning air.