Hanami

We don't take time off from work or school, we drive or walk under them in our suburbs and towns without paying them enough attention, but oh... the cherry blossoms! And this year more than ever, as the grey winter morphed into a cold late spring, I know I longed for blossoms of any sort. Weeks went by and no sign. LB's birthday (always blossom time) toward the end of April was flower-free; my tiny dwarf cherry, which normally blooms quite early, opened its white petals to shy sun and then lost them to rain and wind and cold. I think the same happened to quite a few of the similar larger trees, including my favourite in the whole city: the one I visit every year and which--when I detoured to see it this week--was all leaf and scarcely any blossom. But! those pink cherry trees, so reminiscent of 70s childhoods, have really come into their own this year and so they feature in my own tiny online Hanami this week.  And you know, in the right setting, near red brick houses in particular, they look not bad at all. The *very* leafy suburb (home to the late Garret the Good) where my favourites are, has quiet roads with large red-brick houses and gardens big enough to let the cherry trees spread their limbs wide, as they're supposed to. The wider the reach, the more delightful blossom you can see as you walk underneath.

Pretty in Pink

Even in more ordinary suburbs, the aging cherries still manage to light up dull streets. The sad thing is that most of the cherry trees we see now are getting old and will soon die and they're not being replaced with similar trees - more utilitarian trees such as birches (which I love) mean that we'll lose that thrill of knowing that spring truly has arrived and summer can't be far behind. I think we need more seasonality in our urban planting: so many who live in urban environments and travel to work by car or bus or tram aren't easily tuned in to seasonal change. Trees, shrubs, bulbs in suburban plantings could remind us all, but too often it's the safe (and dull) option that councils seem to go for instead.

Lighting up time

Nothing dull mind you about a cottage garden I cycle past most days - filled to the brim with colour, all year. I'd been thinking about taking a pic for this blog, but felt I should ask and yesterday spotted a young woman walking in. It's her parents' garden and when I remarked how much I liked it and asked if I could take a photo she said "It's very wild! And messy. But go on, he'll be delighted." Hardly wild and not messy, it's not something I'd do myself, but it's one of the happiest gardens in the area. I've stopped there before on my way home when the gardener himself was there and complimented him on his work. He didn't appear this time, but I hope to meet him again anon.

Spring ...

Other quieter delights in the city and 'burbs include magnolias in a neighbour's garden, their goblet-shaped flowers pollinated by beetles as the magnolias evolved before pollinating bees did... they bring a sense of time to an ordinary suburb, they've been around for 50 or 60 million years. And that's a blink of an eye compared to the fossils in the Dublin Calp Limestone which come from sea lilies and other shelly things that basked in the warmth of a shallow tropical sea about 340 million years ago... The ones below I spotted on a lunchtime walk this week in a nearby mews.

Magnolia brings a sense of history to the 'burbs

And the stone in an old building in a Dublin mews ...

... has its own secrets - a layer of  broken fossil sea lilies and other shelly debris from a warm tropical sea
on this spot (or near enough) about 340 million years ago

Morning sunlight in the local park coaxes the oak leaves to open and the cowslips to bloom, the cowslips reminding us of the wilder past the park once had, probably only about 50 years ago.

The oak opens

The cowslip blooms

The morning sun lights the park
(and it has been a while so this is a spot the schnauzer too)

We'll be far from urban cherry trees this weekend but there'll be other compensations. Expect a Donegal Dispatch next week.

Finally, just to note that May is a good month for birthdays - Happy Birthday MM and BL!

Have a good week all.