And three trees ...

I couldn't help thinking of the words of Eliot's "Journey of the Magi" as we climbed to the top of Benmore Gardens below these trees; the time of year is wrong for the poem but right, surely, for the image in the poet's mind as he described the "three trees on the low sky" that foretold how the child the Magi were travelling to see would die over thirty years later.

This was a perfect Easter afternoon: the morning mists had cleared, the sun had warmth in it. In the gardens, we watched two red squirrels chasing each other far up one tall tree and then traversing by tiny branches to the neighbouring heights, their claws scuttering over the bark. We saw a dark butterfly; a rhododendron in full flower was alive with bees; the birds sang as if they would burst.

Alleluia!