Monday Music Magic ~ "Spring"

The first thing that came to my mind, nerd that I am, when I saw this theme, was this poem by one of my favorite poets of all time, Gerard Manley Hopkins, the poet-priest of Oxford:

Spring

By Gerard Manley Hopkins

Nothing is so beautiful as Spring –         

   When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;         

   Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush         

Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring         

The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;

   The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush         

   The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush         

With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.         

What is all this juice and all this joy?         

   A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning

In Eden garden. – Have, get, before it cloy,         

   Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,         

Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,         

   Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.         

Then, I thought about the time of year.  Yeah, yeah, I know...I'm odd!  Ya loves me anyway, so there!    My thoughts about spring are these:

1.  Oh Lord!  Loads of rain...which is fine, as long as I don't have to drive in it, and it doesn't flood the roads and make commuting even more hazardous!
2.  Mosquitoes!  My kids, especially Mini Me, who has to walk up and down the driveway, wait at the end of it every morning to be picked up and dropped off from school, and will begin to play outside, will be eaten alive!!  She has many, MANY scars from mosquito stings -- her arms and legs are speckled with them, and they're ugly!  What the heck can I do to make it easier for her THIS year?
3.  Carpenter ants!  They'll be back with a vengeance as soon as it STAYS above "cold" outside, and I'll be tearing my hair out!  Grrr!
4.  Flies!  ... 

Hmmm...this seems to be degenerating into a blog about household pests.  This IS my reality, despite the beautiful arrival of cherry blossoms and the promise of warmth and the beauty of summer.  The unvarnished truth is that spring in the countryside is the harbinger of pest season...did I forget to mention deer ticks?  Oh yeah ... and this year the expectation is that since the ground has thawed sooner, and the creature that normally feeds on them has not had a chance to flourish because of the unnaturally dry winter, deer ticks will be even more prevalent on the ground this year, meaning Lyme disease cases will increase.

Ah, spring! 

In deference to those many ones of you who love spring as you see it as the beginning of baseball season, here's a picture, taken on one of my daily passes by there, and a tune...