The Hawthorn is flowering

Our very hot spell is now over although it's still very nice weather, just a lot less hot. Which is perhaps not such a bad thing as it was too hot to stitch and I resorted to sitting under a parasol and read. Lovely, of course, but not very productive.

I have been working like a fiend for the last 2 days to catch up and will be showing you more art soon but want to share the flowering hawthorn first. When we visited the Loch Lomond Quilt Show the hawthorns were already flowering in the West of Scotland. They are ahead of us as they have the warm Gulfstream passing them by. But we have now caught up and ours are springing into life too. The first one is always the large tree by our old railway bridge. The railway is long gone (since the 1940's) but our little country road still goes over the bridge and we use the old railway line to walk our dogs. This hawthorn is very sheltered and always puts on a great display. The ones actually in our garden are almost there but not quite!

Of course the smell is gorgeous and I'm so happy to see that there are plenty of bees about too, partaking of the blossoms. There is a terrible bee disease afoot apparently which is serious news for our planet as bees pollinate among other things almost all our food! So it's really good to see so many of them (and wasps, too!!).

Hawthorns have been celebrated in verse many times but here is my favourite poem, which is a great celebration of summer:

Bounty

The full woods overflow

Among the meadow's gold!

A blue-bell wave has rolled

Where crowded cowslips grow.

The drifting hawthorn snow

Brims over hill and wold.

The full woods overflow

Among the meadow's gold;

The ditches are aglow!

The marshes cannot hold

Their kingcups manifold

Heav'n's beauty crowds below,

The full woods overflow!

Mary Webb (1882 - 1927)