The flowers that bloom

in the spring, tra-la,

We welcome the hope

that they bring, tra-la, And that's what we mean when we say that a thing

Is as welcome as flowers

that bloom in the spring.

So goes the lively duet in The Mikado. Spring

comes late to these Ontario highlands from which the headwaters fall away to the great inland seas of North America. But now that the sun has crossed the equator into our northern latitudes we all feel the urge to celebrate, as did Vivaldi in his Concerto in E ('Spring' in The Four Seasons) and Beethoven in his rather blustery Spring Concerto.

Our language uses the word 'spring' variously. In mechanics it is a device that, as is said, 'stores energy', as in a door or watch spring. In geology it is a natural outflow of water. As a verb it means a quick forward movement as in "spring forward, fall backward", words we'll hear often next week. In meteorology it means rising temperatures and the return of flowers - hyacinths, tulips, daffodils and the rest.

If the film Brokeback Mountain bothered you it may be unpleasant to recall the legend behind the hyacinth. Hyakinthos was a handsome young Spartan. Zephyros, god of the west wind fell in love with him. So did Apollo, the multitasked Greek deity who ranked next to Zeus on Mount Olympus and who communicated with humans through oracles such as the one at Delphi.

Hyakinthos responded to the affection of Apollo. Angered, Zephyros deflected a discus that was being thrown and it fractured the skull of the youth who had spurned him. The grieving Apollo fashioned a flower from the drops of Hyakinthos's blood. Omar Khayyam's rubai (quatrain) xviii (rubaiyat is the plural word) speaks of the plant that had blood "dropt in its lap from some once-lovely head".

As for the daffodil, Greek legend pictured the Elysian Fields, eternal home of heroes, as bright with the golden 'asphodelos' flower. In due course the word acquired an initial 'd', lost its final 'os' and became for a time a 'dasphodel'.

The English language completed its transformation. William Wordsworth "wandered lonely as a cloud . . . when all at once I saw a crowd, a host, of golden daffodils". For him the hills of the English Lake District were an earthly paradise. Robert Herrick, the 17th Century poet, had long before him written, "Fair daffodils, we weep to see you haste away so soon . . . We have a short time to stay; as you, we have as short a spring".

A horticultural friend tells me that the common daffodil is sometimes called 'the trumpet narcissus'. For a month now I have tried to hasten the coming of spring by a succession of indoor pots of daffodils. The florists plant them so shallowly that in full bloom they become top heavy. Not so when they are properly planted out of doors.

In my small garden I plant no tulips even though they are my favourite spring flowers. Their colour variety, long 'shelf life' and the way in which they open to embrace the light and close as though to shut out the darkness pleases me.

The difficulty is that in this climate, even after the May/June post-bloom deadheading, the leaves which must be left to return nourishment to the bulbs last so long as to interfere with other planting. The name 'tulip' comes from the Turkish word for 'turban'. The bulbs arrived in Northern Europe in the 16th Century. None have been more assiduous in developing and exporting them than the Dutch. Ottawa's annual tulip festival is a seasonal 'spectacular'.

The tulip's innate power of colour variation is remarkable. If beds of solid colour are desired the bulbs have to be replanted frequently. Not many poets have celebrated the tulip in verse. In The Old Vicarage Rupert Brooke, dead at age 27 in the First Great War, had written, "Here tulips bloom . . . an English unofficial rose". One of his other poems has the lyric words, "All suddenly the spring comes softly".

In literature the Biblical Song of Songs has as fine a tribute as there is to spring. "See, the winter is past, flowers appear upon the earth and the season of singing birds returns.

The cooing of the turtle-dove is heard in the land and the blossoming vines spread their fragrance". And every literate person knows the song in As You Like It, "In spring time, when birds do sing, hey ding a ding ding; sweet lovers love the spring". All who have ever been in love remember a springtime when their world was young.

In painting, Sandro Boticelli's 1478 Primavera is the greatest celebration of the season, unless one prefers Jan Brueghel's earthier 16th Century Flora in a Garden where the goddess is surrounded by a tangled garden and common folk. Unlike the Bible and Shakespeare, Boticelli included no birds in his Florentine woodland where eight mythical figures cavort in semi-detachment from one another.

The central presence of Venus dominates the scene while the Three Graces, Joy, Charm and Beauty, dance. The god Mercury points heavenward, indicating that spring is a foretaste in nature of the eternal world of the blessed. Meanwhile, the darkly sensuous Zephyr reaches out lustfully to the reticent goddess Chloris who knows the downside of mindless, momentary passion, even in the spring.

By the bye, the face of Flora in Primavera is the loveliest in all art. She and others tread a carpet of springtime flowers that do not waste their fragrance on the Tuscan air. But that benign smile, crowned by flowers in the blonde tresses above it, is the very picture of both desire and chastity, the image of springtime as the pathway to summer and of youthful beauty as the threshold of both spousal and maternal love. Question: Does that sound too much like Sister Wendy?

How to capture and internalise springtime while it lasts? That is the other question.