Blossom

The Mole valley last weekend was dazzling white with blackthorn - white on black - and the wild plums and cherries in full bloom everywhere. In Surrey suburbia I am surrounded by cherry and plum cultivars all thick with blossom, white and pink, sometimes a rather oppressive near-red. The pear trees too are at their peak of beauty, and this sunny morning I saw the first open flowers on my apple tree. Even better, walking in to work I inhaled my first lilac blossom of the year...
 I'll probably be corrected on this, but I think English is the only major European language to have a specific word for the spring flowering of trees - and what a perfect word: blossom. (Other languages have variants of 'tree-flowers' or just use 'flowers' indiscriminately.)
 Anyway, this has been a wonderful spring for blossom, thanks to a lot of dry, still weather and sunny days followed by cold nights. Blossom time is brief - that is part of its beauty. Enjoy it while it's here.