Spring is childhood, and I am brought to life again each year without anyone else’s help, assistance, or, more importantly these days, influence. It is an intimate recognition of self, an unspoken truth.
I find something—I make that discovery—that connection with last year and the year before, all the way back in time. It could be a sound, a sight, a taste, or a smell, but most of all, it brings you safely to the now.
Birds tilt their heads to listen, while mammals lift their snouts to catch a scent. We, too, rely on our senses—well, at least, we used to. Here, I recall my six spring delights:
These are my desert island discs of what spring means to me.
Sights of spring – Finding nests
Not long before I drew the picture above, I found my first bird nest. It was a beautiful green mossy cup built on a foundation of twigs and expertly lined with horsehair and wool. Nestled deep inside were four treasures as blue as the blue sky can be.
Delight our children, and they will find delight the rest of their lives.
I would take one egg, carefully piercing a small hole at the top and bottom with a needle—my face flushed, cheeks puffed as I blew the contents into the sink. Then, with quiet pride, I’d place it in my ‘specimen’ case alongside an assortment of skulls, butterflies, owl pellets, and feathers.
My first delight this year was discovering a pair of long-tailed tits weaving their intricate domed nest of lichen, cobwebs, and feathers in a gorse bush I had deliberately planted three years ago to shelter them from magpies. It works—do try it.
Last year, the teal nest pictured held me in quiet wonder… ten eggs protected in soft down. And yes, of course, it remained ten eggs, as our ‘specimen’ case is a photograph these days.
Sights of spring – butterflies
The first peacock and tortoiseshell have already appeared—the latter fluttering against an outhouse window, the former sunbathing on a dried beech leaf. But it’s the warm, sunny March Day I anticipate most, the one that coaxes out the first brimstone—a buttery flutter across the garden, igniting an inner warmth.
The world is OK. Things will settle. Nature remains in control, carrying on as it always has—creating a creature so perfect, so colourful, so uniquely ours, to grace the land once more.
Sounds of spring – Birdsong
Before you instinctively call out cuckoo, chiffchaff, great tit, or song thrush—all wonderful in their own right—there is, for me, a subtler birdsong that signals spring.
The blackbird remains my favourite overall, especially on a summer’s evening, but that’s just it: its song isn’t confined to spring. The skylark, too, has an uplifting joie de vivre. But surpassing them all is that first chatter of house martins fussing under the eaves—at least here in Wiltshire.
Perhaps if I lived on the moors or an ancient floodplain, my choice would be different—a bubbling curlew or a dancing lapwing. But here, now, it is the house martin. Part of its magic is the anticipation, the annual question that lingers: Will they return this year?
Sounds of spring – Frogs
The weather tells you it’s time—a mild spell after February’s frosts, a touch of drizzle, even better. I park in Savernake Forest and follow one of the rides for ten minutes before stepping off the track.
Have I judged it right?
A far-off crow annoys the world from a nearby field while a song thrush sharpens his claim on spring. The low hum ahead grows harsher, separating into distinct notes—“rebit rebit rebit rebit.”
I’ve arrived. The pond in the forest is alive
Smells of spring – Rhubarb
My first crop from the kitchen garden each year is rhubarb—the first taste of something genuinely fresh, with a scent like nothing else when the knife cuts through that first stem. As I slice through the crisp stalks, filling the bowl, a sweet yet sharp aroma rises into the kitchen—unmistakable, acidic, and alive.
It stirs a memory of schoolboy rhubarb and custard, yet it’s the raw scent I crave. Citrusy and bursting with energy, emanating a bitterness before the Aga reduces it to a soft, sweet velvet.
Smells of Spring – Planting new potatoes
“It was one of those March days
When the sun shines hot
And the wind blows cold;
When it is summer in the light
And Winter in the shade.”
So wrote Charles Dickens in ‘Great Expectations’, and here I am with great expectations’ for this year’s potato crop. I am in the soil – I smell the soil, and the seed potatoes smell the same – as I commit them to the soil to be reborn. It rained yesterday, and the warming soil, now gentle to the touch, releases an earthy scent, the unmistakable geosmin of renewal.
