Spring.
'The Spring has sprung, the grass is rizz, I wonder where the boidie is' - words often wrongly attributed to Ogden Nash; instead penned by the more prolific writer, Anonymous.
How do you judge when Spring has sprung?
For me, it is stepping outside and the surprise, after a winter of damp, earthy smells, of breathing in warm, green air.
And the jostling, yellow gatherings, bursting above the grass. Or as Wordsworth rather more eloquently put it
"All at once I saw a crowd,
A host of yellow daffodils,
... fluttering and dancing in the breeze"
I neither flutter nor dance in breezes. Nor do Four-legged-friend and Bertie Baggins. They do however like a spot of lazing in the Spring sun. Particularly when that lazing involves watching me; gardening.
Garden watching is all very well and companionably pleasing even if motivated by we-know-there-are-dog-biscuits-in-one-of-those-gardening-jacket-pockets-so-we'll-sit-here-keeping-you-company-for-as-long-as-it-takes. But every Spring they observe an activity that perplexes them
... daffodil clumps are soft and cushiony ... perfect for dog bottoms.
... So why then, after being shoo-ed off a flattened clump - the clump being so precious n'all - are the daffodil heads chopped off and plonked in glass vases? It's like a Mediaeval execution with the severed heads on display to deter others. It doesn't take a dog to conclude that the daffodils, if asked, would prefer being bent and en-cushioned rather than decapitated.
I like Spring. It's a season overflowing with a delicious state of anticipation (A Chekhov); when so much arrives and changes in such a short time that it can't be drawn in one picture (D Hockney). And when as each night passes and Spring gets closer, Hope traverses the earth and leaves each morning brighter traces of her steps (C Bronte).
One of my favourite quotes about Spring is this from Robin Williams
'Spring is nature's way of saying, 'Let's party!'
I imagine him belting out 'Let's Paa-rrrr-tay!' in 'Good Morning Vietnam!' style. A rousing call to wake and start afresh; a time of plans and projects (L Tolstoy). Which noisy shouting would probably scare these deer ...
... which, given the absence of lambs hereabouts, are in my mind another sign of Spring.
I wish with all this energetic, Tigger-ish Springing, and fluttering and dancing, that I could believe Robert Browning when he says
'The year's at the Spring
... All's right with the world!'
Because it isn't. One day, rather than coming earlier year on year, the Spring may fail to come at all.
Then these words of Hemingway will seem rather prophetic
'When the cold rains kept on and killed the Spring, it was as though a young person had died for no reason.'
Which is a pretty bleak and frankly shocking warning to protect what we have and lest we sleep-walk into a killing of Spring, is a stark endorsement of climate change science.
WARNING: procrasti-rambling procrasti-rant ahead.
To deny the facts underpinning the science of Climate Change and to refute the aims of the Paris Agreement - as some who ought to know better appear to have done this week - risks killing not one young person for no reason but many hundreds of thousands of people, young and old. Good climate science creates good climate policy and cuts greenhouse gases protecting physical and ecological systems for the future and ensuring the arrival of Spring year after year after year. Bad science risks creating bad policy which threatens all our futures.
Calling into question the long established, much debated, considerably researched and proven role of carbon dioxide as a pollutant is bad science. And, if unchallenged, will result in more heat waves; more floods; more fires; more droughts; more disruption of water supplies; more migration and more suffering.
Where am I going with this? If you read the papers, with your fake news filter on, you will probably have guessed. If not, here's a short story -
Once upon a time there was a King. He was a bit orange so he might have been a sun king but that's not important to this story. What is important is that he was a new King and when he surveyed his Kingdom he saw that it was mostly good. But he wanted it all to be good.
He wanted it to be richer.
He wanted it to be free.
Above all, he wanted the changes he wanted to happen quickly.
And he wanted the bit that wasn't in the mostly good part to stop pointing out the obvious and to quieten down a lot. Because that bit was being Exceedingly Inconvenient. And exceedingly inconvenient things would get in the way of his plans.
His plans were all about making people think he was right about everything and getting the job done as fast as possible. The plans were called Get Rich Quick and Short Term Gain. If he got these out of the way, he would have more time to watch television and to concentrate on building a big wall to keep everyone undesirable out of his kingdom.
He wasn't too bothered about warnings that his plans could turn bad. If they did, it wouldn't matter much to him, because by then, he would be retired and living in a golden palace far, far away; the mess he'd left his kingdom in would be someone else's problem.
He was bothered, however, by the Exceedingly Inconvenient part of his kingdom. But he knew how to deal with it. He made proclamations that the Exceedingly Inconvenient part was wrong. He said that perhaps it broke the law. And when he had done with laughing at it and publicly making it look ridiculous, he made one of his best friends the chief of the Exceedingly Inconvenient part. And his friend set about slashing its budget and altering its laws and claiming that it had no right to say all the inconvenient stuff it had been saying in the first place.
Huh! I hope I haven't lost you. Far fetched? Sadly not. Back to Spring ... and politics -
Spring has sprung, earth breathes again,
through open windows view it.
Memorise earth's custom change;
a season's growth and woo it.
Garden lore and planting plans
seeds and instinct; your intuit.
The life you breathe and share with friends,
at Spring you can renew it.
Hope and faith in the earth being well
with science coursing through it
A belief that Spring will never fail
Unless
it's struck
by ....
... hmmm ... do I want to use his name? Naming him makes this about him when it's about so much more. I could call him Pooh-it, if that wasn't so insulting to my favourite ecologically friendly bear. Aw, hang! I'll name him. Remember though it's not who he is but what he's saying and allegedly trying to do that matters ... And it really does matter, to all who call earth home
... so ...
Pruitt!
Pruitt who tried to C-O-two-it
and mire Paris 2016 in claims that misconstrue it.
Pruitt who takes Environment Protection and tries to chew it.
To slash its funds, revoke its laws and thereby aim to ruin it.
Pruitt.
Pruitt!
Pruitt!!
There aren't many more rhymes for Pruitt
Apart from cool it; yes cool it!
That 2 degree cap, don't undo it.
If you subdue it, and we survive to write a history of Pruitt
The global decimation will blame you
And name you the CO-two- ... I don't wish to be libellous, so how about a new nonsense word? ... - git-twit!
A thousand apologies for that terrible poem. But I don't apologise for the sentiment. Perhaps I should redo it. Or write it again and re-debut it. Or tear it up and strew it across a flower bed as mulch. Maybe it's time I withdrew it. Or stopped finding rhymes for Pruitt. No matter how silly I feel, I find I can't juggle words sufficiently to include cruet (hmm ... salt and pepper, diversity ... probably the wrong politician, anyway). Maybe you'll comment and prove it that inserting cruet can be done. And if I attempt to call that someone stupit, you'll take a blade, remove the t, write a d on a piece of paper and glue it. That's it - I really am out of rhyming words now.
As Bertie Baggins watched the sun set on the first full day that felt like Spring,
I watched - and weeded - the greening of the garden.
And despite worries of global warming, I smiled - does anyone else have a dog who watches the setting sun?
