Springing Forth!

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed,
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Shakespeare's Sonnet XVIII

Now it just may be that this little ditty is one of the greatest ode's to beauty e'er writ. The only question is as to whether it refers to the beauty of the subject (fair lady?) or to the written ode itself. The poem tells us that beauty is fleeting in all of its manifestations. All the more precious! Of course, as the years since the poem's writing have shown, the words themselves endure.

The photo is mine. I took it the other day in my front yard. The foreground is a McIntosh Apple bough in full bloom, while the background is my gorgeous Birch tree! I assure you there were no shortages of honey bees in the four apple trees in my front yard that day!

Spring is my favorite season. I love the sights and smells of nature bringing forth her new life. It always brings a hopefulness that all things can be reborn aright. Sorry, I missed getting a pic of the Cherry tree, but Washington DC has my little tree beat all over, so you could easily miss it. But I'll place the four apple trees in my yard against any bouquet you care to show me. They are gorgeous!