Spring stars

Seren y gwanwyn, Welsh for spring squill, these little sky-coloured flowers that pop up all over the clifftop turf on the western coastline of Wales and Ireland. Viewed from a distance they create a sheen of palest azure over the grass, softer and subtler than the intensity of bluebells, more like the shimmer of wood smoke or flakes of the sky itself. It's part of Pembrokeshire's special, secret magic, only to be glimpsed here on the very edge of the land during a brief window of time in late spring.

How odd that Welsh, like a number of other languages, doesn't distinguish between blue and green when the two shades seem of the very essence of its land- and seascape. The ancient Greeks also lacked the concept of blue as a colour, thus Homer always referred to the wine-dark sea and to the sky as bronze. Land-and ice-locked Russians however possess two separate words for light blue, goluboy and dark blue siniy.

Or there's this Blue.