Nature's Sound System.

I usually like to have music playing quietly in the background when I’m decorating, but today there was something I needed to paint outside. The warm spring sunshine was perfect for it, and do you know what? There was a robin singing beautifully from a nearby tree the whole time. It’s sometimes tempting to question the need for human artifice when you’ve got nature on the doorstep.

When I have given up the ghost

And gone to take my final rest

Please lay me where the robin sings

For robin's song is quite the best

And there’ve been a few firsts this weekend. Yesterday I saw the first bumble bee. Today the first blossom appeared on the plum tree, and the first Orange Tip butterfly flitted across the lawn. I regard the Orange Tip as being almost as significant a harbinger of advancing spring as the swallow.

Voila: an Orange Tip butterfly.