Back to early spring wonderment. Contribution of the elderly to nature’s revival warmed my heart in April.

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Here is a post I started to write during the second week of April:

“When I looked at my Saturday afternoon pictures, I felt like listening to music. I chose ‘Prélude à l’Après-midi d’un Faune’ by Claude Debussy, which I am still listening to now I am writing this post. I love the serenity and lightheartedness that transpire from it. Of course there was no rural deity with goat hooves – a faun – in my elders’ country house park on that sunny and warm afternoon, yet there was something magic in the air, a perfect image of spring, a sense of revival in the new season that Debussy’s flute now reminds me of.

I think I know where it came from.

It was a warm afternoon, above 20°, the sort of temperature that awakens the senses after winter. I had felt blue in the past weeks and wasn’t particularly transported by this sudden arrival of summer, but…”

Why didn’t I finish this article? Too metaphoric maybe for a blog aimed at providing tips for easy use of local fruit, and too personal: this blog shouldn’t be about my feelings but about something that is useful to the readers…

Having said that, I think it is good to know that a garden is an ideal place for people of any age to feel the wonderment of nature’s revival. The main point I wanted to make in this post was that… well really an old person like my 93 years old aunt is like a bee contributing to the awakening of nature when the new season comes: as fragile, as effective, and living in the moment.

I thank her for convincing me to drive her to her garden in the country on that day, just a few miles away from the garden of Aurillac, theatre of less agreeable events for a few months now, as my yesterday’s post shows.

So let’s look at a few pictures of that 11th April 2015 afternoon, where the old joins the new to play the concert of nature:

Hundred year old trees: prunus starting to blossom in front of a tulip tree. 11th April, Saint Simon, France.

Two pear trees at least as old as my aunt. I find their age makes the blossoming special. It is like eternity: somewhat it will always be.

This small wild bee sunbathing on the prunus won’t be alive next year, yet it is as if it will ever be part of the spring concert of nature.

My aunt asking me how I feel.

As soon as the new season arrives, she starts gardening! She is like a worker bee… Left: a forsythia in full bloom.