Winter was still hanging on last night, but it feels as thin and brittle as this sliver of frozen water we found on our walk yesterday. It will melt away at the slightest bit of warmth from the sun, or from Jan’s breath and not return for many, many months. I’m glad, i’m so ready for spring, but I do love the painterly effect the ice produced when I photographed things through it yesterday.

Here in Berlin, Spring comes late compared to the UK, and often quite suddenly. I prefer the softer, gentler Spring in Britain. In this part of Germany everything dies back so completely in the winter, by March the landscape looks dead and blackened. Then Spring arrives, and within a week you can almost see the plants and seeds growing, and almost hear them say ‘right, we’d better get cracking, come on!’, and everything shoots up. I think this will come next week as the temperatures rise up the high teens, it’ll be all systems go. The first signs are there already, in amongst the leaf litter.

Each morning I usually read a poem over breakfast. I have a lovely book called A Nature Poem for Every Day of the Year, edited by Jane McMorland Hunter and published by Batsford. Not surprisingly, all the poems at the moment are about spring. There are many different responses to the new season in the poems, and I can tell that my reading of them is so coloured by my experience of the Covid crisis over past year. There were some lovely comments on the blog yesterday (much appreciated, thank you!) , from people who had experienced similar feelings during the pandemic and the Covid restrictions. It’s like we’re seeing everything through the filter of a sheet of emotional ice. But perhaps this filter will melt away if things become more positive over the coming months.

Today’s poem is a few lines taken from Shelley’s Queen Mab and it expresses some hopefulness and optimism that is very welcome against the backdrop of the news broadcasts that remain quite gloomy still –

From Queen Mab, canto IX, lines 165-170, by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)

Though storms may break the primrose on its stalk, Though frosts may blight the freshness of its bloom, Yet Spring’s awakening breath will woo the earth, To feel with kindliest dews its favourite flower, That blooms in mossy banks and darksome glens, Lighting the greenwood with its sunny smile.