DAY 129 - COUNTING DOWN TO THE 50TH

GOOD MORNING, CLASS OF '64

Back Yard Cherry Tree - Leif Nilsson http://www.nilssonstudio.com/art_gallery/leif_nilsson/size/extra_large_paintings_.html

Loveliest of Trees, the Cherry Now

Alfred Edward Housman

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

 Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more
 
And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

Loveliest of Trees, The Cherry Now

by A.E. Housman

(read by Tom O'Bedlam) 

About the Woodlands We Must Go

Did we pay much attention to the change in season from winter to spring in our growing years? Did we notice the blooming forsythia or the apple blossoms? How closely did we look at the crocus, the tulips, the daffodils?

Yellow Warbler & Forsythia - Linda J. Shaw

Were you fortunate enough to have a pussy willow close by? Could you spot a coltsfoot by the side of the road and know it wasn't a dandelion? Did hepatica belong in your vocabulary, back then?

Coltsfoot

Did you search for wildflowers in a field or along the bank of a stream? Did you go for a drive just to find the wild geranium? Did you fall in love with the oxeye daisy and buttercup?

Oxeye Daisy

Did you know the trillium, the chickweed, the columbine? Blue violets were everywhere, but did you spot the white ones?

White Violets

Did you look forward to the Joe Pye, ironweed and black eyed Susan? Did the chicory catch your eye as you drove along a country road?

Joe Pye Weed

What might have been common place, or inconsequential, all those years ago is a joy to the eyes today. What had no name is now a flowering friend. But our time to look at things in bloom is far less than Housman's fifty springs. About the woodlands we must go.  

West Virginia Spring Wildflowers
http://www.wvagriculture.org/images/Literature/SpringWildflowers.pdf
West Virginia Spring Wildflower Identification
http://www.pbase.com/donnar/springwfid      


Instrumental
Cherry Pink (and Apple Blossom White)

Perez Prado's recording of the song with his orchestra featuring trumpeter Billy Regis, whose trumpet sound would slide down and up before the melody would resume, was the most popular version in 1955, reaching number one for 10 weeks on the "Billboard" charts.

Cherry Pink & Apple Blossom White 
Perez Prado - 1955

Vocal
Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White
Georgia Gibbs
1955

Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White
 

It's cherry pink and apple blossom white
When your true lover comes your way
It's cherry pink and apple blossom white
The poets say
 

The story goes that once a cherry tree
Beside an apple tree did grow
And there a boy once met his bride to be
Long long ago
 

The boy looked into her eyes, it was a sight to enthrall
The breezes joined in their sighs, the blossoms started to fall
And as they gently carressed, the lovers looked up to find
The branches of the two trees were intertwined
 

And that is why the poets always write
If there's a new moon bright above
It's cherry pink and apple blossom white
When you're in love

 “What a strange thing!
to be alive
beneath cherry blossoms.”
  Kobayashi Issa, Poems

 

“She turned to the sunlight
And shook her yellow head,
And whispered to her neighbor:
"Winter is dead.”
A.A. Milne, When We Were Very Young

 “It is spring again. 

The earth is like a child that 

knows poems by heart.”
Rainer Maria Rilke

“Spring shows what God can do 

with a drab and dirty world.”
 Virgil Kraft

 

National Cherry Blossom Festival
March 20 - April 14, 2014
http://www.nationalcherryblossomfestival.org/

Spring Blossoms - Wallpaper