On Seasonal Firsts and Startling Epiphanies.

I saw the first lambs of the season yesterday, and today there was another first – the first blooming of the wild garlic on the embankments in Bag Lane. (That’s the sunken lane I’ve talked about before on the blog, probably the best example of a classic English sunken lane I’ve ever seen. Sunken lanes feature in Lord of the Rings, you know. They do.) The point about the garlic flowers, however, is that they’re about a month ahead of their time. The broom bush in my garden is the same. That’s almost in full flower, and both are usually one of the highlights of May. The hawthorn flowers, on the other hand, are showing no inclination to be so precocious. I suspect they fear getting beaten up by their blackthorn cousins if they were.

But the real epiphany came when I was giving the lawn its first mow of the season this afternoon. I was a bit wary of doing it because one of my cocktail of health issues makes any sort of strenuous work uncomfortable, and my lawn has a slope up which the mower has to be pushed. And so it was at the start, but as I went on it became easier. I got to a point where I felt a sudden upwelling of appreciation that I was able to mow my lawn without significant distress, and that was a new one on me. We take such things for granted, don’t we? The lawn needs mowing so you go and mow it. You always have, so there was never any reason to appreciate the fact that it was possible. I enjoyed the feeling and put a little tick in the am I growing up yet box.

I remember seeing a character in a film once luxuriating in the fact that she was alive, and at the time I thought it odd. Being alive is something else we take for granted because we have no conscious experience of not being alive in a physical body. But there was a day shortly after the operation to remove a cancerous kidney four years ago when I learned that particular lesson in abundance. I went for a walk on a warm, calm, sunny day in May. The leaves in wood and hedgerow were fresh and bright green, the woodland floor was delightfully dappled as it is in late spring, the year’s new crops were growing strongly, a profound sense of peace hung in the balmy air, and I stood entranced at seeing the whole thing afresh. I could almost hear the music of Vaughan Williams playing in my head and wondered why I’d never seen it quite like that before.

So there, maybe, is a lesson to bring into the next life: don’t wait until you’re ageing and have a cocktail of health issues before appreciating the value of being young, strong, healthy and alive. Luxuriate in the blessing while you’ve got it.