Farewell to the Cherry Blossom

When I was very young we lived in a house which had a cherry tree in the yard. The blossom filled me with delight, and when it was fallen I felt sad. My grandmother had an old book of Arthur Rackham’s illustrations to Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, where the plates were all at the back of the book, separate from the text, hand-mounted on thick dark card, with each painting laid under transparent paper. You had to lift the paper carefully, it wasn’t quite tissue paper, to look at the pictures. The book was sold after a family crisis, but recently I bought a new, less special copy for myself, so I can still look at the illustrations.  The feeling I had for the  that original book, the pictures under the protective film, made me think also of the feeling that I had for the cherry blossom, which I could see from my bedroom window.  I still remember the sadness when the flowers began to fall.

In Coldstream and the district round about there are many many cherry trees.  When I remarked on this, my husband told me that a farmer had told him that an order for trees  had been made, an order for hundreds of different trees, but that when the trees arrived, they were ALL cherry trees; and that, instead of sending them back, it had been decided to plant them anyway, here, there and everywhere. There is apparently a whole plantation of them up beyond Lennel, which I hope I shall be able to seek out at next year.

 There are older trees, which have obviously been in place since before the Wrong Order:

And younger trees, which were probably planted after the Wrong Order:

There are also probably variations on the theme cherry that I have not delved into.  The pink cherry is very pretty, but for me the cherry blossom that makes my heart lift is the white cherry.  So it has been good to live amoung these trees, this cold Spring:

The cherry blossom starts to fall, just as other flowers are rising up out of the earth:

And it is poignant to walk home along the path strewn with blossom, when the trees above are no longer shining white along the way: