Spring Mizzles Midst the Daffodils

Early this morning I went out into the garden to pick daffodils for the Market
It was what the Irish call a soft morning.
I think 'runny' might have been more accurate. Nice, but runny.
And for March, it was warm and blissfully still.


The cats all came to help, as they do. (Also to check I hadn't actually forgotten about breakfast.)

Lots of daffs at the market

Beside the daffodils, the chives are already four or five inches high. New, bright green spears thrusting through the soil, with curly-leafed sage curling up alongside, and hyacinths straggly but damply beautiful and heavily scented in the wet March air. And the pond is heaving with frogspawn on the turn, the miracle of life taking place in each and every gelatinous bobble, while the goldfish circle lazily, like sharks.
Do goldfish eat frogspawn?
I have no idea.

All around me spring has sprung.

The Forsythia's a bit of a miracle too

I love spring, but as husband and I commented on our way to the market, in my head Spring is an Event - possibly even with a fanfare - something I await every year with bated breath, whereas the reality is that it's been creeping in by the backdoor for months, and before you know it, it'll be over. Half the daffodils are finished even now, the crocus long gone, the snowdrops already just a memory.

While I am sleeping, the Shirotae will have burst, and I picked three bluebells in the woods ten days ago.
Bluebells in March?

The seasons are even more upside down than we thought. Looking back, there was a rose in flower on this bush or that climber throughout the winter, and everywhere I look, the weeds are flourishing.
The slugs and snails certainly are.
There is even a fat bud on one of my summer poppies!
But, like me, my lovely viburnum bodantense that has been in bloom since October, seems unaware that spring is here, that it should be packing  up and going to bed. Its bare branches are still covered in oleander-scented pink flowers, the tiny shoots of new leaves just starting to appear.
I think it's waiting for the sound of trumpets.

Perhaps I should tell it - fanfare or no fanfare, this is it. Now. Today.

Somehow I have to get out of my preconceived expectations and learn to revel in the moment.
Every moment.
Even if it is a mizzly one.

Narcissus have such pretty faces