More thoughts on spring...

Ahhh, Spring!

Buds bursting, little green fingers of grass

poking their way up through the earth

where only last month snow lay thick.

The breeze makes the blossoms tremble.

I can only laugh and point

as downy clouds rise up above the mountain tops.

Sunlight sweeps my eyelids awake

Nodding narcissii acknowledge my gaze

making the sky look bluer than it is.

I, singing in spring

There's something about spring mornings. I took this picture outside the Viceregal Lodge, stunned at the time, by the way spring seemed to have burst over Shimla. Flames of greens and blues and whites and yellows shooting upwards and outwards. A lovely day to do little else but lie back, chew on a blade of grass and ponder the shapes of the clouds.

D.H Lawrence puts it so well:

This spring as it comes bursts up in bonfires green,
Wild puffing of emerald trees, and flame-filled bushes,
Thorn-blossom lifting in wreaths of smoke between
Where the wood fumes up and the watery, flickering rushes.

I am amazed at this spring, this conflagration
Of green fires lit on the soil of the earth, this blaze
Of growing, and sparks that puff in wild gyration,
Faces of people streaming across my gaze.

And I, what fountain of fire am I among
This leaping combustion of spring? My spirit is tossed
About like a shadow buffeted in the throng
Of flames, a shadow that’s gone astray, and is lost.

I don't care for what anyone thinks!

I love wisteria! Love its lavender scent. Being intoxicated by it on my way to work. The shades of light purple, violet and pale lavender. The frail tendrils that drape like so many candelabra on the gazebo.

What do I not like about wisteria - the clinging vine act, for sure!

For the scientific-minded among my gentle readers, here are the details:

Wisteria or wistaria, any plant of the genus Wisteria, woody twining vines of the family Leguminosae (pulse family), cultivated and highly esteemed for the beautiful pendent clusters of pealike flowers, lilac, white, or pink.

Wisteria is classified in the division Magnoliophyta, class Magnoliopsida, order Rosales, family Leguminosae.

Shimla's rooftops

There are several tiers of rooftops, basically capping higgeldy-piggeldy biuildings that were built into the ridhe that skirts Shimla. These are home to the Middle & Lower Bazaars: Kipling's "crowded rabbit-warren that climbs from the valley to the Town Hall at an angle of forty-five".