I’ve never really known when the first day of spring is. Have you?
Research tells me that the meteorological spring season started on March 1. However if you focus on the spring equinox, Tuesday March 19th marked the official start and for those who prefer the first full day of spring after the equinox then it was on Wednesday.
During the spring (or vernal) equinox in March, the sun’s direct rays cross Earth’s equator into the Northern Hemisphere. While it’s the first day of astronomical spring in North America, Europe and Asia, summer transitions to autumn in the Southern Hemisphere.
As a child brought up in the country for me it was far more than this.
It was that transition between the fire being lit every day to warm the living room and heat the water to days returning home from school with no more crumpets toasting on the fire and baths on a Sunday heated by the electric emersion heater.
It was and still is the first leaf buds appearing on the trees with the simple beauty of snowdrops gathered around the trunks and yellow and purple crocuses scattered amongst the grassy lawns. Walking through the woods and seeing the wood anemones closely followed in late March/early April by the distinctive smell of carpets of bluebells.
For me spring is definitely a time to say goodbye to those long winter months, often nowadays filled with endless rain and cold blustery weather rather than the drifts of snow I remember as a young child and teenager. It’s a time to beckon in warmer weather, to think about the new life we see all around us from the bouncing lambs in the fields to the nesting birds in the hedgerows. It definitely symbolises to me an opportunity for reflection, for taking stock of life and moving forward.
2024 has not been kind to my family thus far with a series of health issues, both mental and physical and a cancer that cut short a friends’ life within six weeks of diagnosis. It would be easy to dwell in this murky world full of tears, discontent and feelings of anger, hurt and even frustration with our NHS service but life does go on. You have to pick yourself up, look around you and be grateful for what you do have. If I ever need to capture that gratitude for life I venture out into the countryside.
As part of our plans for 2024 we decided to organise some one day visits to exhibitions, shows, sporting events and even a music festival.
Having previously been members of the National Trust here in the UK we opted this year instead to join the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) as we do love to visit gardens full of different flowers giving off an array of beautiful smells and eye popping blooms. Being a member entitles you to free unlimited access to the RHS’s five main gardens but also over 200 partner gardens. As a result I recently found myself exploring Batsford Arboretum near Moreton-in-the-Marsh in the North Cotswolds..
Batsford Estate:
Spread across 60 acres the arboretum is not only home to a unique collection of some of the world’s most beautiful and rare trees, shrubs and bamboos but also allows fantastic views across the Batsford Estate. Although the house and grasslands are private and not accessible we still managed to stand and watch a beautiful herd of deer grazing on the new Spring grass.
The estate was inherited in 1886 by Algernon Freeman-Mitford, 1st Barton of Redesdale who travelled widely in Asia and, as a result, developed the garden as a “wild” landscape with natural plantings inspired by Chinese and Japanese practice. Mitford also built the 600 metre artificial watercourse which runs down the western side of the gardens as well as other features such as the hermit’s cave, rockeries, the thatched cottage and a Japanese Rest House, complete with rooftop dragon to ward off evil spirits!
Towards the end of his life Algernon wrote his memoirs and described his garden and the significance of the Buddha statue, the bronze deer and the Rest House which he brought here in 1900 and are still in the Arboretum.
When he died in 1916, he was succeeded by David Freeman-Mitford, who was father of the famous Mitford sisters who lived at Batsford during World War I. Nancy Mitford based the early part of her novel Love in a Cold Climate on their time at Batsford.
The gardens were somewhat neglected during the two great wars and it was in the hands of one of it’s successive owners, Frederick Anthony Hamilton Wills, the 2nd Lord Dulverton, that it was brought back to its former glory. He was passionate about forestry and trees and set about restoring the garden to its former glory, replanting the garden with trees in particular and creating the bones of the arboretum you can see today.
With a choice of paths and walks to navigate depending upon your ability, our Springtime visit brought forth impressive displays of spring flowering bulbs – from carpets of snowdrops, aconites, hellebores, daffodils and narcissi, to the just budding blossom of the magnolias and the occasional grape hyacinth.
If you ever need to reevaluate life take yourself off into nature. Focus on what you have rather than what you don’t have. Listen to the birds, the gentle trickle of the stream as it flows downhill and the beauty all around you.
Life goes on, the Spring flowers peak through the soil, the leaves bud on the trees and the birds continue to line their nests ready for their new offspring.
Like winter shrug off all those cold, hard feelings and look towards the sunshine.
I’m an Aquarian so the future will always hold wonderment to me but as I stand on the bridge overlooking the flowing stream I remind myself to be grateful for the love of my family, for my happiness and well being and most of all for still being here welcoming in another Spring.
A Midlife Adventure 