New beginnings

This long, hard winter seems finally to be coming to an end and it feels fitting that this week my thoughts have turned to new beginnings: Sunday 1st April finally gave us a glimpse of spring sunshine and with it a chance to visit one of my favourite National Trust gardens. The Courts Garden in Holt, Wiltshire is a hidden gem. Garden rooms of different styles reveal themselves at every turn. There is quirky topiary, a peaceful water garden, an arboretum, a sunken garden and, right now, a beautiful carpet of spring bulbs. Armed with a magnifying glass, granddaughter and I discovered sleepy bugs venturing out of their hiding places and, to my delight, a miniature cherry tree just coming into flower in the hidden kitchen garden. This brought to mind one of my favourite poems of this time of year so here it is, courtesy of A.E. Houseman:

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now

Is hung with bloom along the bough

And stands about the woodland ride

Wearing white for Eastertide

Now of my threescore years and ten,

Twenty will not come again,

And take from seventy springs a score,

It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom

Fifty springs are little room,

About the woodlands I will go,

To see the cherry hung with snow