Darling buds of May have us licking our lips

DURING the month of the scaraveen (discussed extensively by Donal Hickey on this page last week) “rough winds” did indeed “shake the darling buds of May”, as Shakespeare so perfectly described the emerging blossom, and its annual rout, some 400 years ago.

In a corner of Cork City last week, I came upon drifts of petals blown into an urban corner from a cherry tree almost hidden behind a garden wall. They lay, like a small snowdrift, in a side street off a thoroughfare loud and busy with passing cars. The petals, lying piled together, were light as snowflakes but pale pink — things of beauty, certainly, but not, as in John Keats’ assertion, “a joy forever”; unfortunately such joys do not increase, but wither. However, in his poem, he goes on to write of nature’s never-failing beauty which, changing with the seasons, is always there for those who venture out to seek it.

The first 10m of an avenue to an old estate near where I live is carpeted with rhododendron blossom, flamboyant, almost brash, in contrast to the delicacy of the cherry blossom. No wonder the Japanese make such a to-do about cherry blossom: I remember, when we lived in Japan, the school at which I taught was closed for a morning so that the students could view the cherry blossom in the city parks, being adjudged on that very day to have reached the climax of its beauty; and seeing groups on trains, the Chuo line, heading for Mount Fuji, outside the city, to some famous cherry-blossom-viewing venue there.