Big Beautiful March Poem

Biblical in Glasgow, no snow in Hawaii, the Severn Bore, and moose on the move

So here we go…all month you have been commenting with the things you have spotted or done week by week that made each moment special or particular, and now it is time to combine them all and see how the month progressed… It’s a massive one, as you would image from such a massive month, so get yourself a cup of tea and take your time. An admission: as I mentioned on Friday I am right at the end of the writing process for The Almanac 2025, and I’m afraid I have just run out of time to include your comments of the last few days. Please have a look back at them here. There was one very special one that I had found time to sneak in…but you’ll have to read right to the end to find it.

Here we go:

The bunny ear covers have been pushed off the magnolia flowers

Enjoying signs of spring while knowing that March will keep taking us back to winter if it feels like it

Seasonal aisles at the market changed from the red and pink hearts of February to the green shamrocks and Guinness of March

Watching magpies pulling twigs from next doors tree for their nest

The yearly miracle that is our pink cherry tree beginning to unfold

A pair of dunnocks doing a funny hopping and stopping dance on the path - which lead to a moment of flutter and - I imagine - a couple of eggs laid in the nest under the hedge

Frogspawn in the pond!!

The joy and defiance of yellow at this time of year: daffodils, forsythia, primroses

First goose egg of the year

The ponds almost clear of ice and ducks out on the water

Little pops of yellow on my walk that promise the spring and valiantly battle with the gusty winds and seemingly ceaseless rain

Still in jigsaw mode

Rain, rain, rain and oh, mud

Daffodils and crocuses but at 6 p.m. the world is still wintry dusk. It all still looks like February and nothing else

First hot cross bun of the season! Toasted, with tangy home made marmalade

Suddenly the whole garden is yellow with tete-a-tete daffodils

Rabbits racing around in the morning sunshine, startling a pheasant

No snow in Hawaii

sunshine turned to rain, turned to hail and back again while just a few miles up the road a layer of snow coats the roads

Beginning work in garden, so lovely to have a dry but cold day.

Acorns here in NZ, littered in the dry grass. Feeding a few of the darkest grapes from the vine with some tiny pale leaves to the guineapigs

Flocks of swan, geese, ducks & black birds on the marsh - raucous and wild with noise!

So much oozy, slippy mud and puddles in places I’ve never seen before!

The sound of a woodpecker

Cold here in Alaska, but we can smell spring in the air, and hear it in the songbirds' voices, and see it as the sun stretches itself out longer and longer each day

My camelia laden with pale pink flowers

Magnolias out on a visit to London, as if the city had preview tickets to spring but we have to wait for general release out here in the sticks

Hair ice

So cold I could see my breath in the kitchen, frozen locks on the car, then driving to work with the rising sun the most amazing ball of beautiful red fire

Garden tidying up this week in a jumper and no coat

The warmth of the sun on my face as I sat on my bench

The fleeting fragrance of hyacinths borne on the breeze

Light mornings, violets, daisies and celandines

A pair of robins in the garden, the male feeding the female

My dwarf Fuji cherry laden with delicate blossom on pretty, twisty branches - beautiful!

A flooded field beside the m25, the trees cut off mid trunk

My heart aching at dusk as the robin and blackbird sing their good nights

Two hares chasing the sunrise across a frosty field

The first bumblebee emerging from its cosy winter hibernation and busying itself with the important job of pollination

The violets and borage growing wild in the Tuscan spring alongside wild stinging nettle. Both nettle and borage are used in cooking by foragers

The first yellow butterfly fluttering around the early camellias

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Biblical in Glasgow, it feels like day 102 of rain here

Whooping as the Severn Bore rolled its way up the River Severn. The Spirits of the Severn were at play - salt , mud and flotsam and jetsam on the backflow

Four huge dozy queen bumblebees stumbling about, the biggest queen wasp I have ever seen and many ladybirds A mass awakening this week

Finally getting into the garden, digging in new compost, planting my new mint plant. That post-work hour or so of daylight is truly a gift!

Sunny and warm here in North Carolina - perfect for bare feet and watching the sunset from outdoors

A week of scowling, sulking skies

Hearing the first curlews, a carpet of cowslips on the sand dunes, damp, thickset clouds and a very high tide all seen from a beach cave with a fire on the go

Finally finding the spring joy with blue skies, skylarks singing overhead, bumbles buzzing and a hawthorn hedge exploding into flower overnight

The heaviest snowfall of the season in Colorado followed by a bluebird day, a clear blue sky day after a snowfall

The tree frogs sounding for all the world like a gaggle of geese squawking day and night in the vernal pools

Banks on each side of the road covered with celandines and huge swathes of daffodils. Catkins, blackthorn, and magnolias adding to the wonderful budding spring picture

From the coast path seeing seals and their growing pups, gannets and guillemots courting already, blackthorn in bloom, and a dapper pair of stonechats in amongst the protection of the cliffside bramble

The unmistakable song of the chiffchaff returning from his winter sojourn in Africa

Pools and moss, cloud drama and rainbows

The sun shone briefly and I dared to wear shoes instead of some form of boot for the first time this year and felt air around my ankles and dreamt of drier, sunnier times. Back to boots the next day.

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Around Loch Tay, the rivers babbling, the wind through my hair and the exhilaration of cycling into spring

Painting wooden Easter eggs for the school egg hunt

Digging up snowdrops in the green from my garden, putting them into pots to give away

Sitting drinking coffee under the cherry tree in peak blossom - ‘cherry blossom bathing’ as the petals drift down like pink snow

Ladybirds, and lovely lambs in the fields close by

Magnolias suddenly everywhere in Sheffield

A quick equinox fire before the rain set in again

Seizing every moment when the sun shines to sit in the garden with a cuppa and the birds for company. First comma butterfly of the year

My husband emerging into the garden to dig over the veg beds

Chiff chaff chiff chaff chiff chaff all through the woods as I picked wild garlic to make pesto

An olfactory sensation travelling from Salt Lake City back to coastal California: cold desert sage on a pale pink spring morning, then briny ocean air blowing off the San Francisco Bay across the freeway, salt and gas

Hanging my hammock up in the garden

The sun came out and the temperatures warmed up for four straight days, and it was like a fairy wand was waved over the garden: daffodils, flowering currant, cherry flower buds, tiny lime green leaves all over

It is The Yellowing in North Carolina - the world is covered with yellow pollen. The lake has a thick yellow film on top, everyone with allergies is miserable

Our white cherry blossom tree in peak performance against the blue sky

Celebrating ostara, by decorating my seasonal space and sharing the story of the Goddess and the hare. Oh and eating chocolate eggs

Seeing and hearing the first skylarks of the year and marvelling at curlews flew over my head so close I ducked

The blue tits have moved into the new nest box

The Trumpeter Swans have once again found their way back to the sloughs and byways of South-Central Alaska. The moose are moving down from the bluffs to rejoin the herd and then spread apart to the summer feeding grounds until fall mating season. We are still in the transition phase from winter to spring but I love the promised hope of life that this time of year brings to my soul

How magic is that??

I love the way you can track the changes week by week, though I have to note that there is very much still a big MUD AND RAIN theme from those of us in the UK, sigh. Fingers crossed we finally get a new theme for April (did I just curse it…?)

Leave me a comment and let me know how you enjoyed it. Catch you on Friday when we will start to build our lovely, spring-like SUNNY April poem…