Although it is still very cold, with a biting wind from the east, the sun shone for most of the day and in the garden at long last it felt more like spring than winter.
We have primroses and daffodils out but a very welcome newcomer was a daisy on the lawn opening its petals wide to the sunshine
As Shelley said in his poem The Question:
I dream'd that, as I wander'd by the way,
Bare Winter suddenly was changed to Spring
And later:
Daisies, those pearl'd Arcturi of the earth,
The constellated flower that never sets
'Arcturi' refers to stars, presumably in the region of Arcturus. The reference to it never setting means, I think, that daisies are nearly always in flower not that the petals do not close up at night.
Chaucer was also a great fan of daisies:
But I am up and walking in the mead
To see this flower against the sunshine spread.
When it upriseth early by the morrow :
That blissful sight doth soften all my sorrow
As well as daisies there were one or two insects about including this fly on our back wall. Not sure of the identity, but possibly an Egle species, an Anthomiid associated with sallow blossom.
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