A garden is a lovesome thing

Plum blossom and forsythia

Yes, well, maybe everything in the garden is lovely.  Most things.  There is a sprinkling of white on the cherry tree, the pear trees are a haze of pale green and white, the plum trees look as though three inches of snow is clinging to the branches, the forsythia is in full golden bloom.  Granted, the daffodils are all but finished and the tulips are still to come, but there are violets showing there purple spots everywhere, along with a few grape hyacinths (masses in the front garden) and a couple of scrawny pink hyacinths.

On the other hand, there is no sign of any of the peas poking through.  Nor the sweet Williams or antirrhinums, but one runner bean has poked a tentative shoot into the air.  And the grass needs cutting - again!

The title is part of the first line of a poem I knew quite well as a child.  Auntie Grace - who later cut herself off from the family - was a dab hand with the needle and thread and embroidered a table cloth frequently used by my grandmother when we went round for tea.  The embroidery featured garden scenes and round the edge ran the words of a poem by Thomas Edward Brown:

A garden is a lovesome thing,  God wot!
Rose plot,
Fringed pool,
Ferned grot -
The veriest school
Of peace; and yet the fool
Contends that God is not -
Not God! in gardens! when the eve is cool?
Nay, but I have a sign;
’Tis very sure God walks in mine.

 I wish he'd cut the grass while he's here.