That Time of Year

Twice a week, I do a ninety-mile drive through the orchard country in Northern California. About two weeks a year, the orchards are awash in blossoms--mostly almond and peach, some pear, maybe some cherry. So, no better time for this:

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.

--A.E. Houseman

In the spirit of heavy-handed irony, I am off to Los Angeles, for a look at the not-so-new Disney Concert Hall, and the not-really-new-at-all Getty Center. Domestic tranquility requires that the laptop stay home, so little or no blogging for several days.

Update: UB's Fresno bureau weighs in--

I just read your blog re the beauty of the orchards in bloom. I agree,
they are lovely. But I used to get a lot more pleasure out of the sight
before I realized the amounts of chemical fertilizers and pesticides that
are applied. It is no accident that you don't see a lot of houses amid the
strees.

So, does that explain my nasty allergies? Sounds like there is a premise for a good Houseman parody here.