May Flowers

With the rain, the flowers are beginning to change. The lanes through Ledicot, a small hamlet near here, are lined with froths of cow parsley, three and four feet high, delicate, elegant, white lacy flowers on long stems. (They are everywhere, every lane and road has them to varying degrees, as every lane and road has primulas and bluebells and did have daffodils.) A probably-illegal vase of them stands on the windowsill here, with some of the mountain cornflowers from the garden. The blossom in the hedges is starting to disappear as the leaves on neighbouring trees thicken and obscure it. And the paddock flowers are changing too as the season starts to evolve into summer, with buttercups and forget-me-nots starting to take over from the dandelions which are now turning to seed. The passage of time measured by dandelion clocks. An art project has meant the collection of hundreds of seed-heads which are hung throughout the house to dry, ever-so-gently waving in the house's breezes. But something happens to dandelion heads, unnaturally dried and not allowed to explode in the wind. On the deep window ledges here they are spontaneously collapsing, perhaps under their own weight, a gentle silent deterioration, perhaps in protest at their captivity.