Blossom days
'From their haunts in the green hills came again the sweet and sorrowful cry of the peewits. The air in the porch, after the stony chill within, struck warm on the cheek, and mild as new milk, laden faintly with the earth-sweet fragrance of the hills and the remote freshness of the sea. The evening star in the tarnished gold of the west shone liquid and solitary.'
'The wind is cold, the Spring seems long a-waking; The woods are brown and bare; Yet this is March: soon April will be making All things most sweet and fair.
See, even now, in hedge and thicket tangled, One brave and cheering sight: The leafless branches of the Blackthorn, spangled With starry blossoms white!'
- Cicely Mary Barker
The haunt of nightingales in spring, the dark, thorny branches of the blackthorn blossom before their leaves have grown. Snow-white, delicate flowers cover the black branches and in due course will become dusty-purple sloes. Such witchy, beautiful little trees.