Daffy Down Dilly

Climate Change? This is what it's like here this Easter morn. A blizzard raging, fresh snow covering yesterday's tracks, and our daffodils lying like fallen soldiers, beaten down by six days of snow. It might be resurrection day in the Christian calendar but there'll be no rising again for my daffy-down-dillies this spring.

Later we'll be dashing through the snow to P & K's. For Benjamin I have a nice new Benjamin Bunny, a re-published edition of the Warne original, and a big book of mammals filled with gorgeous elephants, meeerkats, rhinos and all the rest (he loves animal books). For Noah, a knitted blanket (by me) that I had to unravel and enlarge because he came into the world too big for it.

TO DAFFODILS
by Robert Herrick

FAIR daffodils, we weep to see
You haste away so soon ;
As yet the early-rising sun
Has not attain'd his noon.
Stay, stay,
Until the hasting day
Has run
But to the evensong ;
And, having prayed together, we
Will go with you along.

We have short time to stay, as you,
We have as short a spring ;
As quick a growth to meet decay,
As you, or anything.
We die,
As your hours do, and dry
Away,
Like to the summer's rain ;
Or as the pearls of morning's dew,
Ne'er to be found again.