April has been so full of spring but it’s not over with the arrival of May, with its full-blown array of colours and sound all around . Bird song and lambs calling for their mothers. Children out playing in warmer sunlight. The May is out and adorning the hedgerows as they themselves awake from their winter sleep along with cow parsley and other wild delights beneath. Trees which were tight are opening their limbs and birds nesting within . Cowslips popping up in the meadows along with occasional rare Orchids (if you know where to look !) just glorious, so you can see I have been somewhat distracted from having my nose in a book .
Did think about spring cleaning of the bookcases, but failed early on at B’s, distracted as this magical book caught my eye, no more tidying happened as I slipped into the world of..
The Darling Buds of May by H.E Bates
As many will know this was the first in of his Larkin novels, and re reading it made my sides ache with laughter. Despite for ever immortalised by the 1991 ITV adaptation with David Jason and Pamela Ferris playing Pop and Ma Larkin , and the then unknown Catherine Zeta Jones playing their eldest daughter Mariette . nothing beats reading the book .
Which brings me on to also by him a non-fiction book which he wrote in 1940:
Through the Woods. Republished by Little Toller books in their nature classic library, illustrated by Agnes Miller Parker ‘s engravings. Bates fascination with woodlands remained with him though out his life and he fell under their spell. The flora and fauna and along with the characters who lived, or work there be they animal or man . The book cover itself with its carpet of bluebells with the sunlight streaming though the emerging spring canopy of the trees is enough to draw you in. And a treat of his writing will not disappoint and may surprise one as he is an author more often though as a novelist .
Vanishing Landscapes By Bonnie Lander Johnson , The story of plants and how we lost them . With printmaker Rosanna Morris illustrations
The question being put to us “have we lost the sense that plants are precious”? looking at seven different plants that were once nurtured and used in every day life, be it for food medicine and even building materials we have become more dependent on factories and large corporation production instead ? . But as the author goes in search of the old life she finds those who are still connected with the land and , she discovers all is not lost and that it may well not be too late to look to the past to go forward and reconnect with nature.