'The Four Seasons'
The Four Seasons
The weather is looking fine again as I look out my bedroom window. I can see two birds in the hedgerow across the road. The birds grew fewer between November and March and it was lovely to see them back occupying our hedgerows and garden areas in large numbers again over the past few weeks. I particularly derive great pleasure from seeing them splash about in the bird bath outside my house during the warm months of the year. Whenever I get the opportunity to visit a secret wild meadow of mine that my good friend and deceased gardener Geoffrey Smith once showed me a number of years ago, I never fail to be overcome by the sheer sight, smell, touch and sound of the wild flowers and the visiting birds from all over England. I don't know all their names like my brother-in-law Richard does, but I do know where they 'hang out' in large numbers, especially down some nearby fields.
I don't know about you, but I cannot imagine a nicer sound to awake to than the song of the birds or a nicer view to intoxicate the senses than looking at them within the changing seasons of our land. The sight of the birds got me thinking about the seasons that we enjoy each year; months of the year when nature makes her different offerings of beauty and bows to God's creation.
I love the four seasons that we are blessed with, especially the onset of spring. I love to see that February groundsheet of snow covering the earth with the promise of good things to come: the budding snowdrop popping its delicate white body up through the hard soil as if to say, 'Do your worse. I'm coming and there's not a thing you can do to stop me blossoming.'
I also love the winter, summer and the autumn. When the snow was here six months ago, I found myself walking along a country lane, too narrow in path to allow the passage of cars. As I walked, admiring the hedgerow and listening to the birdsong of a nesting sparrow, I passed by a stretch of lane that had four old cottages in a row along one side. The cottages were the picture-card type that the present owners had left unspoilt in their Victorian architectural splendour.
I also love the winter, summer and the autumn. When the snow was here six months ago, I found myself walking along a country lane, too narrow in path to allow the passage of cars. As I walked, admiring the hedgerow and listening to the birdsong of a nesting sparrow, I passed by a stretch of lane that had four old cottages in a row along one side. The cottages were the picture-card type that the present owners had left unspoilt in their Victorian architectural splendour.
As I walked by the cottages I looked up at their roofs and quaintly tilted chimneys. Their advancing years had witnessed many seasons of resting snow covering them, leaving the old rooftops bowed towards their centre ridge. It left an indelible image in my mind, something that I will never forget. It was as though the old cottages that had withstood the weather ravages of two centuries, could sense the love and admiration of their beauty as I passed by. As I looked up lovingly, their roof ridges appeared to politely bow and curtsied with respect to me.
I also love the summer in its fullest splendour. It is a time of year when young lovers walk the country lanes in a step of hope, and older women throw caution to the wind and dress themselves in free flowing, colourful dresses that they loved to wear in younger years. It is a time of year when men of advancing years decide to walk those country lanes whilst the bounce in their stride enables them to still do so.
I love autumn and the kaleidoscope of hazy colours that it adorns the trees with to intoxicate our senses. That time of quiet reflection when the warmth of the hot days of summer fade into fading memory, only to be replaced by the falling leaves and woodland animals preparing for their winter hibernation.
I love autumn and the kaleidoscope of hazy colours that it adorns the trees with to intoxicate our senses. That time of quiet reflection when the warmth of the hot days of summer fade into fading memory, only to be replaced by the falling leaves and woodland animals preparing for their winter hibernation.
Then comes Christmas; that special time of year (whether one be Christian or pagan), that is capable of softening the hardest of hearts. It is a time when the promise of a new-born star lightens the souls of those in sadness and when friends grow ever closer in their acquaintanceship; encouraging the act of giving to another before the gratification of oneself. For it only through the free giving of one to another that mankind shows humanity of soul: it is only through 'giving' that we each become the good people that our God meant us to be.
I love all our four seasons and I pray that climate change never alters them throughout the English year. Oh, four seasons; you remain the source of my general contentment and the focus of my most secret thoughts.
You remain my most enduring image of God's eternal love and the salvation of my senses in moments of your unadulterated and most natural of majestic seasonal delight.
Copyright William Forde April, 2012.
