That's the thing about spring, you notice all the new colours that suddenly burst forth.
I was going down a tree-shrouded lane in West Lancashire the other evening when I suddenly noticed the effect of the sunlight on the new leaves.
There was every shade of green imaginable in just a short stretch of road. Sycamores are differently leaved to whitebeams, chesnut to beech and so on. And the intensity of the colour is heightened at this time when they are still fresh from the bud.
It's the same in the fields going across the moss, too. I think of a couple of fields which have been left fallow all winter and now they have a pallette of colours which sweeps into the distance.
Yellow blades of stubble have green swords of new growth running through them, while there are plants that turn red and orange from weathering, particularly rain and frost.
As if this is not enough, there are now brilliant fields of oilseed rape blazing by the roadside, almost dazzling you.
Other fields have been ploughed, harrowed and drilled into a uniform brown landscape, though that will soon be picked out in green as the potatoes start to show through.
Music on the moss: It's been a varied week. Legendary folkie John Stewart has been strumming away on his live Pheonix Concert recording. He helped make the Kingston Trio famous in the sixties, then ventured into a solo career. He came to prominence with California Bloodlines, a landmark album, then took on board Fleetwood Mac's Lyndsey Buckingham as his producer for some more rockier albums. Then there has been Hot Tuna with their blues-rock on Yellow Fever.
And just in case anyone is wondering where the title to this blog came from, it's the opening line of a song from The Incredible String Band's terrific album The 5000 Spirts Or The Layers Of The Onion. I wonder why they don't write album titles like that any more?

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