We are well on our way out of February and I have already shown you some of those early Spring flowers that inspired me the other week in my small courtyard garden.

So this morning I was looking at sticks.

Sticks about to turn into leafy plants.

We were introduced to botany at school well before we realized it by putting those “sticky buds” into jam jars and watching the buds burst open in that annual miracle of new life.

The sticks in my photographs are already telling me that before long, that new cherry tree planted last Spring is about to leap into blossom. I hope that every year now, I will have that brief Japanese moment of joy when the cherry blossom takes its delicate and brief moment on centre stage.

The other photograph is of Rhododendron luteum. More sticks with a story to tell. Those buds contain bright yellow flowers and, on sunny days in late Spring, they too will have their moment; not just that dash of yellow but the whole of this small walled garden will be filled with its sweet, sensuous, intoxicating perfume.

So lets hear it for the sticks.

They talk of beginnings, of burgeoning power, hope and anticipation.

Bud Burst

Something has lifted.
Call it a mood,
Something in the brain,
An illness passing.

That empty space called future,
No longer quite so blank.
Some hints here now of continuance,
revelation, initiation.

The aching thud of history,
Sounds now of more than pain;
More now than just a warning,
A healed wound, a threat.

All is one, united, strong.
Only significant now:
Those hopes and memories,
Immaterial, whimsical, confusing.

Call it a mood.
This bud burst,
This excitement in the present tense.

It is Butterfly awaiting Pinkerton,
But this time a hope fulfilled.

She is there, under the eternal blossom,
No victim to our eyes.

He too, has found his love,
Freed from his past, his destiny.

Call it a mood,
A recovery, a mystery even,
Call it what you like,
But live it; live it now.

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