Cherry

I don't know where the time goes. But it certainly goes somewhere, and pretty briskly to boot. The days are slipping by, and all I do is slump exhausted on the sofa and, somewhat perplexed, watch them disappear.

I still think of 2015 being in its infancy, and yet April is nearly over, with little achieved on my part to show for it. My list of books read this year is very terse, though I can blame David Copperfield for hanging around since Christmas. I have talked to several people regarding a new kitchen, which is an advance over the previous seven years, but at this rate it looks as if nothing will get decided in the near future.

The weather recently has alternated between balmy summer evenings and chilly wintry mornings. Indeed, snow and hail made brief appearances today, before the sun came out. Inspired by nature springing to life all around me, I've doused my feeble excuse for a lawn with stuff to made the grass look greener and the moss and weeds disappear. Nothing has happened yet. I keep expecting to step out of the house one morning and find all the grass has shrivelled up.

But all this is just shallow levity, something to cheer myself up. I would, if asked, all too easily bemoan my lot in life: the lack of time, the constraints of work, the unflinching mortgage. But, really, what have I to worry about? The news reports have been dominated by tragedy upon tragedy in recent days. Thousands have died in the Nepal earthquake last weekend. In previous weeks, many hundreds of immigrants have drowned in the Mediterranean attempting to cross to Europe. Civil war in eastern Ukraine rumbles on. Too much sadness to think about. And hence the shallowness.

But the blossom is pretty at the moment.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.