Send these roots rain

The apple trees are bent over with their burden like people carrying bags of shopping. Damsons fall noiselessly onto the sparse dry grass, carpeting it with blue. In the hedges, blackberries are small and hard but sweet. Nature's bounty is overwhelming: the feeding of the five billion.

It could be. Although we have had no real rain for two months the harvest is in and it is a good one. Surely this island could support itself if we had to, as in war time? If money were spent on developing ways of desalinating seawater to irrigate the world's deserts and using the abundant power of the sun, the wind and the waves, we could live in a world where hunger was like the memory of a bad dream and droughts and floods were rare events.

Instead we spend trillions on vain wars and rescue packages for banks.

The tears of Mother Nature

An eerie image. We see faces everywhere: in clouds, in the moon, in rocks and trees. But this one has a resonance and a deep aching sadness.
I have been to Svalbard, where this breaking glacier lies. It is one of the saddest and strangest places on earth. I shall never forget the cold August sun rising over jagged ice and rock at Magdalenafjord, and the stones marking the graves of a dozen or so lonely whalers on a beach. Their lives must have been indescribably harsh. Or Barentsburg, that haunted far-flung outpost of the old Soviet empire. The inhabitants were brave people.

Scale

I woke at six this morning and went out to water the lettuces. As I filled my watering can from the outside tap, I carelessly let it overflow and water poured onto the pavers. I peered down. An ant was trapped on an island of dry stone, running round and round to find a way out. He would approach the meniscus, then bravely broach the wall of water, wade in for a few millimetres before turning back and trying some other spot. There was only one possible escape route. He ran along a tiny twig, first one way then the other. Both ends led to more water. Then he spotted a rose leaf a short jump from the twig. Across the narrow ford of liquid he plunged, reaching the safety of the leaf, where he would no doubt wait until the temporary flood subsided.

How important our own lives seem to us. How little we know of the rest of Nature.

Invasion of the Painted Ladies

The garden is under airborne attack. We are being invaded by dozens of Painted Lady butterflies. They are a tiny part of a huge north-moving swarm from North Africa which has landed on our shores in the past week or so.

Some of them are a little battered and storm-tossed, it is true. But it is wonderful to see them in such numbers as they weave and duck and dive amongst the spring flowers.

We don't spray. There are greenfly, slugs and snails but there are plenty of birds to eat them.

A garden without butterflies is no garden.

Musical magic

On Sunday we had a real treat. The young pianist Jessica Chan came up from London to give us a recital of Scarlatti, Mozart, Liszt, Debussy and Scriabin.

The Studio was packed - of course - and the audience listened in rapt silence to playing of maturity and mastery. Liszt's 'Rigoletto' paraphrase glittered and sparkled with cascades of diamond-dust. Debussy's first book of Images gave me the greatest pleasure. All the subtle shadings and chiaroscuro effects of this wonderful music were there, as if heard for the first time. The modernity of the sound was startling. So much that we composers take for granted in our musical vocabulary seems to have originated in Debussy's music. I believe his greatness is still not fully recognised.

Everything else worked like clockwork. The weather was early May at its best, gentle breezes fanning the warming earth. As I sat at the back, listening to the music, I heard a blackbird and a robin singing not far away.

Moments of magic that touch the soul.

Thames rolls on

I am hard at work revising 'Thames' for a possible performance in the States this summer. This guy has said he would like to programme it with other river-inspired pieces: Smetana's 'Vltava' and Schumann's 'Rhenish' Symphony. In any case, the score needs tidying and improving. I am a bit stuck in the eddies and cross-currents around Westminster Bridge, but hope to reach the sea ( or should I say the ocean?) in a week or so.

Someone in Tennessee wanted to play 'For the Fallen' on Veteran's Day in November, but I sadly had to decline the request to transcribe it as a string quartet.

'Trafalgar 1805' is being used as the incidental music for a student production of the Oresteia at Boston Unversity.

Foot-soldiers of spring

There is something touching about the first flowers of spring.

Snowdrops in a corner by the wall, pushing through ivy and dead leaves. Wild violets in the bank by the road, their deep secret perfume inspiring devotion. Primroses everywhere, never too many. Crocuses, shiny toy soldiers in paintbox uniforms. Grave Lenten Roses in their sepia dresses.

On Friday I worked all day in the garden. There was a hint of that balmy softness that is so much a part of an English spring.
For a few moments, a lark sang high above. You could almost smell the sap rising.

Even the weeds looked fresh and new.