Spring Snapshots

Of all four seasons, Spring is my all-time favourite. And although each season holds it in the charm stakes, Spring holds it together better in my heart. In fact, if the four seasons made up a perfume, Spring would be its basenote.

The sweet smell of (Spring) success: hawthorn

For me, Spring signifies the true commencement of a new year, unlike 1st January, because it symbolises birth - rebirth even - renewal, nature waking up. It symbolises life and a new beginning. It encapsulates the anticipation of exciting things to come, it heralds the end of Winter drab, and the longer milder days and shorter nights. It holds the promise of Summer, those long lazy vacational Summer days that fill us with simple carefree joy: picnics, gathering with friends, garden parties, music festivals, pottering about in the garden...

Spring is promising on many fronts, and it is also a floral revelation - be it in the garden, the local park, the countryside around us. Simple little moments of happiness in my experience, like witnessing a sprinkle of crocuses across a lawn, a bright yellow sparkle of daffodils down the grass verges of nearby Mobberley (Cheshire), the beautiful white lilac in my front garden making me proud by displaying its floral scented best to all and sundry, trees getting dressed up in a variation of tender green leaves, wildlife busied up chirping, building nests, raising youngs.

The poppy patrol: papaver

Spring provides some of the finest, most delicate garden produce: asparagus, artichoke, lettuce, radish, herbs, strawberries, cherries, rhubarb, medlars... And of course those fine Jersey new potatoes that make up the best salads! You can't get bored in the kitchen in Spring thanks to all those fine cooking possibilities!

Spring makes us ladies yearn to be prettier and lighter, discarding scarves, shedding clumpy attire, instead revealing dresses, sporting shorter sleeves, showing off bold colour schemes, daring bright patterns, flaunting floaty/ see-through fabrics. Spring is simply inspirational. It gets us out of houses and out and about, out there in the open.

Part of Ralph Lauren's Blue Label womenswear collection

Spring by name and Spring by nature. It is, in my eyes, like a metaphorical springboard, filling me with energy, with ideas, with enthusiasm. It is invigorating and regenerating like a citrus-fresh fragrance.

Everything seems possible in Spring, everything looks rosier, lighter, smoother, happier. It sounds terribly cliché to say but Spring makes me spring into action, it's when those long-forgotten foggy New Year's resolutions from weeks and weeks ago suddenly rush back to the forefront and enthuse me to act on them. A good Spring clean, not solely in domestic terms, but also as regards matters of the mind, addressing those things and people and actions that bug us and delay us and drag us down. And to get on top of the tedious long put-off paperwork and those other chores at large.

Christian Dior's Escale à Portofino: so fresh!

Ideas pop up, start coming together as by magic, they materialise, see the day of life. Spring gives me strength, it clears my head. And my favourite month in Spring? You might have guessed, it is right now - May!

And by the way, what is your favourite season, and why?