its leaves rustle o'er me

Snowdrop likes her music class at school. I don't know what they do in it, because as far as class time goes, the girl keeps descriptions short, but I've heard snippets about some group time and screen time and instrument time and it all seems to please her. When I was her age, or slightly older, I, too liked music class. Sometimes. We had a music teacher -- Mrs. Kaufmann -- who did not like me and I returned that favor. I have to admit, both of us had good reasons. She was awfully boring and stiff and I was a wild troublemaker (in her class). So much so that my parents got called to school for my misbehavior -- the one and only time where that happened in my school years.

But predictably, many decades later, I appreciate bits and pieces of that class and especially of Mrs. Kaufmann's choice of music material. When we were not clapping out rhythms and learning about scales, we sang. And among the many international songs (I went to an international school), she often returned to one that was my enduring favorite -- a traditional Welsh song -- the Ash Grove.

This morning I had the radio on even before breakfast, before animals, before all of it. And the first selection on the morning music program on NPR was the Ash Grove as performed by Cai Thomas.

Listen to it here:

Oh, the memories! And the way those beautiful notes came back to me on spring evenings when the "leaves rustled o'er me," or in Wales, where the song stayed with me, in the same way that Speed Bonny Boat -- another song learned in school -- was just the right thing to sing when I was on the Isle of Skye. 

Of course, it is fitting to have a song about a grove of trees stay in your head all morning on a day when tree planting still takes up a chunk of our time. (After breakfast of course.)

I admit to singing loudly rather than humming quietly. The chickens took it in stride. The cats were a little freaked out. They're very sensitive to unusual sounds.

In the afternoon I went shopping for wine. This is the first real shopping trip for me. I figured it would be brief and therefore I wouldn't feel too strange being inside a store. It was fantastic to look at real labels and to pick wines that again reminded me of places: one from Burgundy, one from the Lake Garda region of Italy and one from my beloved Catalan hills of southern France. Everything is so evocative right now!

And look what's blooming right now: this very tiny flower -- an original English bluebell! ("... around us for gladness the bluebells were ringing") I planted it last fall and had no hope for it at all and yet it flowered, bringing memories of a conversation about bluebells that I had with a whiskey craftsman on the Isle of Islay in Scotland. My own bluebell is growing in front of a lavender bush. Yes, that does remind me of France's lavender fields. How could it not!

Am I longing to set out somewhere? Nah... I'm just a little stuck in memories of past trips ("... each step wakes a memory as freely I roam"), the grand ones with lots of good walks and good food and good wine. Or whiskey, because when in Rome...

But to reiterate, I feel no tug to travel yet. Right now I am rooted at home, in our new forest and new and old flower beds at the farmette. And most of all, I am rooted to the people here, with whom my encounters were so precarious, tenuous, sometimes even impossible in this past year. ("... a host of kind faces is gazing on me")

Here's one such person! At the farmette, after school, in her pajamas, because it was pj day in her class.

She has little interest in staying outside, possibly because it feels sticky hot out there and cool and shady indoors.

And in the evening, we throw open the windows to the cooling air and I get ready for the interesting set of days ahead!