If Any One Had Gone Round The Fields
On Old May-Day, The 13th, - His - May-Day, They Might Have
Found the deep
blue bird's-eye veronica, anemones, star-like stitchworts, cowslips,
buttercups, lesser celandine, daisies, white blackthorn, and gorse
In
bloom - in short, a list enough to make a page bright with colour, though
the wind might be bitter. In the coldest and most exposed place I ever
lived in, and with a spring as cold as this, the May garlands included
orchids, and the meadows were perfectly golden with marsh-marigolds. For
some reason or other the flowers seem to come as near as they can to
their time, let the weather be as hard as it may. They are more regular
than the migrant birds, and much more so than the trees. The elm, oak,
and ash appear to wait a great deal on the sun and the atmosphere, and
their boughs give much better indications of what the weather has really
been than birds and flowers. The migrant birds try their hardest to keep
time, and some of them arrive a week or more before they are noticed.
Elm, oak, and ash are the surest indicators; the horse-chestnut is very
apt to put forth its broad succulent leaves too soon; the sycamore, too,
is an early tree in spite of everything. It has been said that of late
years we have not had any settled, soft, warm weather till after
midsummer. There has been a steady continual cold draught from the
northward till the sun reached the solstice, so that the summers, in
fact, have not commenced till the end of June.
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