Country Living with Francis Farragher

“Nothing is so beautiful as Spring,

When weeds, in wheels,

Shoot long and lovely and lush.”

THE first two lines of the Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem about the arrival of Spring and on a morning last week as I made an early morning journey to work, I kind of felt that there’s just a need in all of us to find little trinkets of happiness that can keep us going through sullen times.

Of course, we have to care about what’s going on in the world and do our little bits to try and end the slaughter of the innocents in places like Palestine, Gaza and the Ukraine but sometimes there’s a need to switch off the TV channel from the news images of Trump, Putin, McGregor and Netanyahu. At least in Ireland, despite all our issues about housing, the cost-of-living and taxes, we now reside in a part of the world that’s relatively peaceful.

This year here in Ireland we’ve been blessed with a benign month of March with generous sprinklings of spring sunshine and extended dry periods as we slip through the Spring or Vernal Equinox, when at last in the Northern Hemisphere, light once more, edges ahead in the annual battle with darkness.

Here in Galway, on Tuesday, March 18 last, we enjoyed a period of time between sunrise and sunset of 12 hours, 3 minutes and 9 seconds as the sun in our northern skies edges closer to a height of 40°.

The Spring Equinox always heralds the signs of growth and new shoots of greenery while also playing a key part in the date each year that many of us Christians celebrate the Easter Festival, with Easter Sunday falling on the first Sunday, after the first Full Moon, after the Vernal Equinox. With our April Full Moon arriving on Sunday the 13th, the Easter Weekend slips back to the 20th, so a slightly later celebration than normal of the great Christian celebration.

Even for those not imbued with any flush of religious fervour, there is a sense of invigoration as the daffodils start to appear forming golden guards of honour for nature; the lambs start racing around in the fields; the grass starts to turn a richer green; and farmers think of letting their cattle out of sheds to thrive on the lushness of reawakened fields.

Pictured: Spring: The season of light and rejuvenation.