eptivity

Whoever said “O, to be in England, now that April’s there” was not kidding.*

I’ve never really had a favorite season. This is probably because Portland only has two of them:

1. Mild and rainy [Labor Day until the day after the Rose Parade]
2. Sunny and humid [whatever is left]

Neither did I develop a seasonal preference after five years of living in Walla Walla, which ostensibly has four of them.

According to the Walla Walla Valley Academy school song, Walla Walla looks like this:

Where the Blue Mountains rise to meet the skies
Hills and valleys of green make a paradise
Whispering trees in the breeze waving to and fro
‘Neath their cooling shade mountain streamlets flow
It is here nature gives of her bounty rare
Waving fields, golden grains, flowers everywhere
In this land of apple blossom sweet
Stands a school none other can ever beat…

…but if you have ever actually been to Walla Walla, you know that the bounteous paradise described herein lasts for an approximately 12-hour period between winter (mostly frozen) and summer (mostly molten), usually during the middle of the night. Then it’s back to dust storms and softened tarmac.

So I have been pleasantly surprised to learn that April in England is glorious. Other places, take note: it only takes three things:

1. Daylight [longer days, start of British Summer Time helps]

2. Flowers [wildflowers, flowering trees and hedgerows, and gardens maintained by a people with an unparalleled  zealotry for gardening]

3. Birds [early morning birdsong, male birds trying out their cute little bird seduction tricks, everyone collecting nest supplies, and tiny little bitesize baby ducks on the canal]

O, to be in England
Now that April ‘s there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England—now!

And after April, when May follows,
And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows!
Hark, where my blossom’d pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
Blossoms and dewdrops—at the bent spray’s edge—
That ‘s the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!
And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
All will be gay when noontide wakes anew
The buttercups, the little children’s dower
—Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!

* Robert Browning, “Home Thoughts, from Abroad”