Arboretum in May

We visited the Harcourt Arboretum today in the May sunshine, where the rhododendrons were in bloom and peacocks mewing, shaking out their tales and making small children cry, but I'll leave those to your imaginations and better photographers since I still have Hughes in mind:

Here is the fern's frond, unfurling a gesture,

Like a conductor whose music will now be pause

And the one note of silence

To which the whole earth dances gravely.

('Fern')
There was another visitor from the Bodleian:
Oaks are now fully leafed, vivid green, and their flowers drying up and falling off:
The meadow crawled with life, like this lime green spider spinning between buttercups:

Finally, a visitor to our garden, just before she was chased away by the magpies nesting in the leylandiis and chattering like monkeys every morning: