Spring!

Dear Pigeon,

Today I want to write, quite predictably about SPRING! Ever since dark, dank, cold, boring, dementorish February I have been desperately seeking signs of SPRING! everywhere. Every year I am fooled by the snowdrops. They emerge out of the hard, frosty ground and I say, ‘Hooray! Spring is here!’ Only of course it’s not. There’s more biting cold to come. Then the crocuses pop-up, flourishing their fancy purple heads on their silly spindly stalks and I say ‘Hooray! Spring is here!’ all over again, only to gaze, dismayed, as they’re squashed flat by a shower of icy rain. But yesterday, I think quite officially, SPRING came. Here is what I saw:

1. One bumblebee, flying fatly across the path in front of me
2. Skylark, trilling high, in all its profuse strains of unpremeditated art (that last bit was Shelley, not me).
3. Most exciting of all, FROGS, mating, in the pond. There’s a clutch of them, gripping each other with all four legs, the males croaking madly, bodies clenched, poor females pushed to the bottom. Already globby lumps of slimy spawn are bubbling over the surface. Last year, we had to pull out a couple of bloated drowned females, their bodies white and startling, filled to bursting with water. This year, there is also one deformed frog, hunchbacked, sadly croaking alone on the pond’s edge. I have included a Victorian freak-show style photograph of Humpy.
4. One bright yellow Brimstone butterfly
5. Sweet-smelling blackthorn in blossom

Hooray for SPRING!

What have you seen?