Good to be alive days

For me, the best days are our crisp, clear, sunny, spring days. The temperature's cool enough to need a jacket and yet there's a promise of warmth in the sunshine. The light is diffused and nature's colours offer a palette of soft green, yellow, blue and white. Perfect. 

The woods and fields are studded with buttery yellow celandines and delicate white wood anemones. The wild garlic leaves are sprouting; soon their white flowers will scent the woods, and around the same time the bluebells will flush the ground with a wash of blue.  

The pussy willow is fluffy with pollen. My phone doesn't do them justice really. My camera would have picked out the structure better against a more blurred backdrop but I was travelling light. 

One or two magnolia trees are venturing their blossom, hopeful of no more frosts to brown them. 

'It is spring again. The earth is like a child that knows poems by heart.' Rainer Maria Rilke

'It's a spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you've got it, you want to — oh, you don't quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!'  Mark Twain