England is beautiful

Brian here again: England is far more beautiful than we could have imagined, and spring must be its most beautiful season of all. It began (quite early, we're told) a couple months ago with the blooming of the daffodils and other larger wildflowers. You might remember how absolutely lovely a time early spring was from our previous posts. The line in the Cranberries song, Daffodil Lament, will forever mean so much more to me having been here: 'and the daffodils look lovely today'.

The early spring flowers are all gone now. They've slowly wilted and died away over the last couple months. But by no means is spring over: now there are literally millions of tiny, utterly beautiful flowers anywhere you set your eyes. They're small enough that you might not notice them at first; some of them are downright tiny. But if you pay careful attention, you will notice some of the most astounding beauty in all the earth:







In the photo below there are no less than a half-dozen different varieties of flowers, each growing in all its glory without the slightest help from man.


And it's not just the flowers--the trees have all gone into bloom over the past couple months as well:




Even the motorway is lined with amazing flowering trees:


The one and only kind of flowering tree that I have ever seen that is more beautiful than the ones here in England is the Flamboyant (or 'Royal Poinciana' or flamboyante, en español, depending on where you see one), which is originally native to Madagascar but grows everywhere in the Caribbean basin and surrounding subtropical areas. Flamboyantes adorn the Finca Vigia, Hemingway's home near Havana, among other places. We first noticed them during our trip to the Virgin Islands; I remember some particularly stunning ones beside the pool at our hotel and at Government House just outside Road Town on Tortola. We've seen them in South Florida, too, but they were nowhere near as brilliant and colourful as the ones in the Virgins.

I think England's most beautiful plant of all, though, is this crop plant:


It's called oil seed rape, and it is the chief ingredient to vegetable oil. Despite its harsh-sounding name, I think a field of oil seed rape is one of the most stunning things I have ever seen:




And to think that I took every one of these photos while on a brief walk after lunch today, meaning all this beauty is within walking distance of our home. How wonderful it is to live in such a beautiful place! This last photo illustrates exactly what I mean: here is the entire University of Sussex campus, surrounded on all sides by the preserved land of the South Downs. We are so blessed to be here!