Ajooma

The English like gardening, and I suppose to an extension flowers. They seem obsessed with maintaining their lawn. There are so many gardening shows on TV, something that would be unheard of in Korea, and so many magazines and book dedicated to the subject. There are not that many people in London who have gardens, but there are many public parks. There are 8 huge former hunting grounds that are now Royal Parks. Those green spaces covers an area of about 5,000 acres (20 km²). The most famous of the Royal Parks is probably Hyde, with it’s corner of free speech. Besides these parks, there are over numerous common parks and loads of small gardens dotted around the city. Some are substantially large (Victoria Park) and some are just a stretch of thin grass. But the point is there are lots of them, and it’s easy to find one within a 10 minute walk.

I know I complain allot about living here, but the soothing greenery and the simulacra of nature is one thing I really appreciate. The moist climate helps to keep it green, and the English are meticulous with their gardens. And it’s green most of the time, except when the first stirrings of spring start showing. Then it’s green and yellow.

Of all the flowers associated with England, I wouldn’t immediately think of the daffodil, but in the spring London is carpeted with them. But then I never heard of William Wordsworth, who was England’s Poet Laureate from 1843 till he died 7 years later. He immortalized the humble little flower in I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud which was published in 1807. This romantic recollection of some daffodils the poet saw a long long time ago is part of the English Literature GCSE course in some British examination boards, and has seeped itself into the psyche of the English mind. Spring without them would be akin to no 개나리 in the spring in Korea.

Funny that both of them are a bright yellow. But such a sunny happy colour is like a shot of vitamin after the bleak dark winter, and now I welcome the flowers.

I WANDERED LONELY AS A CLOUD

I wandered lonely as a cloud:
That floats on high over vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars
that shine and twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretched in never-ending line
along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
in such a jocund company:
I gazed - and gazed - but little thought
what wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils