Strichen woods to see the cherries hung with snow

Wood anemones (Anemone nemorosa)

To avoid what would have been a wasted damp day, Grey Granite and Rufus visited a friend in Strichen this afternoon then spent an hour wandering about in the woods and by the Ugie. We were delighted to find wood sorrel in the wood by the line and great drifts of wood anemones down by the Ugie - just beyond the 5 roads bridge. In the community park where there are plantings of both garden and native plants, which Grey Granite finds disconcerting, thinking that the site lends itself to native species, we saw magnificent white cherries hung with snow. Grey Granite recalled hearing the much esteemed Rev Charles Birnie quoting Housman's 'Loveliest of Trees' in the Rosehearty pulpit many years ago.

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

Grey Granite is acutely aware of the need to invert the mathematics of the poem and resolved to take every opportunity to revel in looking at things in bloom.