"Loveliest of trees..."

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 three score years and ten
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy years 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. Housman
1859-1936

A nice poem but, oh dear-- the math. A score is 20 years, and A.E. Housman was only 20 when he wrote this poem. He expected to live a total of "three score years and ten," and that would be age 70. So the young fellow is bemoaning the fact he has only FIFTY more springs to see the cherry blossoms. Ah, youth. Boo-hoo. If you flip flop the numbers, I have about a score of springs LEFT...

Not to be morbid, but a thousand years would not be long enough anyway to look at cherry trees like these. I took this picture last spring when I was taking classes at the University of Washington. There's nothing that spectacular blooming here yet, but soon. Yesterday I noticed the earliest flowering trees along our banana belt street are just starting to show some pink and while color. It was a pretty sight in the afternoon sunlight.