At long last the trees are coming into leaf in more than a nascent way - the sudden clouds of bright lime green made the Forest electric in parts, with a vital green fire. At the Hawk Observatory, the trees that spent the winter as burgundy or purple or claret, and finally a grey-brown, had come alive at last, and were peridot green. The stark beauty of the path to the Belvedere, where all the hills had been framed and foregrounded in an intense latticework of branches and graceful silhouettes of trees, like a canvas lashed and shot through with an overlayer of paint marks like cracks or threads, giving it a violence, was transformed by clouds of pale viridian... And everywhere the landscape was softened, all the harsh shapes and bleak colours becoming blurred at the edges, and richer in tone and shade.
The view from the Ridge seemed brighter, darker, clearer. The view from the Observatory even more so - so many more details visible in the clear air. Rather than greys or pale blues or olive greens, the hills were deeper sea blues, the greens more velvet, the purples in the hills not the branches.
It came - after the cold five months of winter - like a miracle. And I saw every flower and new flush of green with a wonder as if I hadn't seen many Springs before. No wonder they used to worship the Spring as a God.
