Front Lawn?

Not exactly neatly mown grass, but very colourful nonetheless!

Bluebells are flowers that will always carry mixed emotion for me. I'm not really a flowers sort of girl at all, but I've always loved bluebells - I like their colour, I love the way they grow on woodland floors in vast numbers, and I really like that they "do what they say on the tin" - i.e. they're blue and bells!!!

However, the events of spring 2003 have changed my perception of them for ever. The day before he died, my much loved stepfather and my mother went walking together in bluebell woods. It was decided that the flowers on top of his coffin should be bluebells, and so, to this day, and probably for ever, when I see bluebells I remember walking, arm in arm with my stepsister, into the crematorium for the funeral service.

It's an odd mixture of memories: pleasure at seeing the flowers themselves, sadness at the memory of the funeral and the earth-shattering effect my stepfather's death had on my family (he was also my stepmother's first husband and my father's best friend), but also happy memories of my stepfather and his life.

I think about these things every year when the bluebells come out.