The darling buds of May

Flowers, flowers, flowers. Oh, what sweet thoughts rise up for me at the word 'May'! It takes me back to when I was 15, living in Scotland, and at school. I had my first boyfriend, an intelligent boy given to illustrating his letters to me. In class he sent me quotations from Shakespeare, and the one I shall always remember is from Sonnet 18:

'Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May...'

I don't know if you, dear reader, remember your first romantic thoughts, and how wonderful they were. Today there are flowers everywhere – in the countryside, gardens, parks, among the trees. Nature exploding!

And 'flowers' lead me on to an important question. Have you ever been still enough, with time enough, to bend down and look at the face of a flower, gently, but with concentration? Try. Take, for example, pansies. They are all different. I'm looking at some now. Look at the outer edge of purple, watch how it shades into yellow and ends in purple again. Take another pansy, see the outer edge of white dissolve into deep purple in the centre. The centres are always encircled to lead the bees inside. What rapturous gifts nature gives us, if we would only look and see!