The month of May has not so far been particularly merry this year. We’ve had some lovely days admittedly but for much of the time our valley has been covered by a mist which could be more fittingly called a cloud. We are all living in this cloud but it is not quite cloud cuckoo land although the plaintive two-note call of the spirit bird echoes across our glades.

This week marks Christ’s Ascension and the Redeemer of mankind was swallowed by a cloud to be taken up to the Celestial city of God the Father.

In the Acts of the Apostles it is written: ‘So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, will you at this time restore God’s kingdom?” He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses to the end of the earth.” And when he had said these things, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. And while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes, and said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”

A good lady in our village of Longoio was taken from us too this week and she will surely join her Redeemer. Flora’s health had not been very encouraging for some time but she battled on with fortitude. Flora’s funeral in our little cemetery just outside Longoio, near Mobbiano, was accompanied by truly disconsolate weather; a constant drizzle misted up my glasses already fogged over by the anti-covid mask we are still obliged to wear for any kind of public gathering in this part of the world.

Don Franco, the parish priest, had foregone the normal church funeral service in our local church of San Gemignano and conducted the entire ceremony of the blessing of the deceased in the cemetery’s damp atmosphere.

The attendance, despite the weather, was a praiseworthy one for Flora was a much-loved as well as a much-respected lady and we all mourn her departure but know she is going to a better place.

For Flora of Longoio

*

The heavens weep upon an earth drowned in sorrow;

we cry quite needlessly for we forget

there will be eternal hope on the morrow.

*

The land lies silent and only the crow

lets his black croak break the sodden wet.

The heavens weep upon an earth drowned in sorrow

*

and will that day ever come we call tomorrow?

The spring flowers and on garden’s red rosette

there will be eternal hope on the morrow.

*

Yet the path is rough and the way is narrow,

there is danger of being caught in a net:

the heavens weep upon an earth drowned in sorrow.

*

Our days are subject to time’s cruel arrow

but although life seems a game of roulette

there will be eternal hope on the morrow.

*

To heal our souls rises the magic yarrow

and we pass by like a tiny vignette.

The heavens weep upon an earth drowned in sorrow:

there will be eternal hope on the morrow.

An Italian saying describes February as a month that is nasty weather-wise but which is also thankfully short. True, much of February has been filled with some very trying times here in the Val di Lima. The month has either given us days of continuous deluging rain or inflicted temperatures descending to minus seven. For Saint Valentine’s day, we woke up to fresh snowfalls and to be outside for just a few minutes without gloves meant frozen fingers and red cheeks.

Within the past few days, the climate has completely changed. True, the nights remain still comparatively cold although now above freezing. During the day, however, the temperature has soared above twenty degrees centigrade; not only can coats come off but sweaters too and yesterday I opened a sunshade on my terrace since the midday sun had become a little too hot.

Talk of global warming! I don’t remember a heat haze quite like this in February…and it`s scheduled to continue for at least another week.

Time to look at doing some serious gardening. I walked to my little olive grove the other day and was shocked to find that two trees had almost been uprooted as a result of completely sodden ground and some strong winds.

With the help of neighbours, the trees were uprighted and I`m sure they will be saved.

Meanwhile, all the signs of spring are here including some delightful clumps of daffodils which my wife had planted with English bulbs.

Let’s hope we won’t go to the other extreme and find a water shortage as has sometimes happened at this time of year…

Barely a week ago the weather around Longoio was like this:

Longoio recorded temperatures of minus 5 and l have rarely seen the ice in my tub so thick.

I was worried for my camellia buds:

And Cheeky looked despondently on the desolate scene.

It’s been all change this week, however. Temperatures have risen by over ten degrees and the skies have turned to muggy mists rather than the freezing blues we’ve been having.

In the wood surrounding our cottage a welcome bunch of daffodils are blossoming, ready for March and Saint David’s day.

The hardy hellebores line our forest paths:

Our scattering of garden flowers are recovering.

The fountain in our outside wall retains its hardy foliage 

while the terracotta Madonna I placed there all those years ago when I first came here looks benignly on the scene.

My coveted calendar, given free at the Erbolario natural medicine shop at Fornaci, reflects the patch of snowdrops nearby.

In English the name ‘snowdrop’ implies that these bold little flowers have dropped onto the white stuff from above. In Italy these flowers are even more audacious since the name given to them is  ‘bucaneve’ – literally ‘snow piercer’.

Let us emulate these flowers and all that spring promises in our own hopes at these difficult times and may they be equally positive.