Spring has finally arrived in Korea. Well, the spring blossoms have arrived. The weather is still annoying and a little crazy. Last week Wednesday, for example, it snowed. On Saturday, however, the sun came out and the weather promised to be relatively warm. Perfect weather for a picnic. It feels like ages since I had a relaxed weekend that didn’t involve going somewhere or at least planning to go somewhere, so the main aim of the day was to find a pleasant spot with some sunshine and some prettiness and sprawl out with a book on a blanket.
I decided to go to Duryu Park, my favourite park here in Daegu. Getting there is even easier from my new area (Jisan) – I just walk down past the hut towards Castle Gold Park and pick up a number #3-1 bus from there. It takes about 20 minutes by bus to get to the park.
The first thing I saw when I stepped off the bus was a road, with hills of green stretching away on each side, lined, all the way to where it wound around a corner in the distance, with trees in full spring bloom. After several abortive attempts to travel to other parts of the country to find some spring flowers, it seems the place to look was right here all along. There are certainly more than cherry blossoms. I like all the spring flowers. I do see the particular appeal of the cherry blossoms, however.
This is the first time I’ve seen cherry blossoms in the forests, when I took a walk through the wooded hills of Duryu park. They’re particularly beautiful against the fresh spring green of new leaves and the bare branches of those trees still waiting for the season’s change to reach them. I still think they may be most spectacular in avenues, however. There is an avenue of cherry trees along one side of Suseong Lake. It took a while for the trees to blossom. In fact, trees scattered around the other three sides of the lake had blossomed up to a week earlier and I thought these trees must be some other sort. Until I went walking at the lake last Tuesday and found myself walking beneath a canopy of delicate pink blossoms, meeting above my head and painting the whole world the shade of a romantic movie. The thing about cherry blossoms, apart from the exquisitely delicate pale-pink colour, is the density of flowers. A lot of blossom trees have just one or two blossoms on a branch. This can be beautiful but it means that the blossoms are individual delicate flowers. For pure spectacular-ness, they simply cannot compete, however, with the way that cherry blossoms cluster along branches and absolutely cover the tree with their glorious beauty. This is, of course, also highlighted by the dark brown trunk and branches occasionally glimpsed through the flower-clusters. I’ve tried, several times, to capture the gloriousness of the cherry blossom spring in photographs but it seems to resist being caught on film, so I suppose this will just have to be a memory I carry in my mind.
The other thing about cherry blossoms I discover – again while walking at the lake – is cherry blossom snow. I refer, of course, to the falling cherry blossom petals. I found myself earlier this week, walking along that same avenue of cherry blossoms, this time with the wind whirling cherry blossom petals around me like snowflakes. Suddenly I was walking through spring. I couldn’t resist spinning around in joy.
On Saturday, I saw some cherry blossom trees and enjoyed their glory but I equally enjoyed the other flowers and the spring-green of new leaves, as well as other bits and pieces of a spring day – like tiny orange fish darting around a pond, a middle-ages lady fast asleep on a wooden platform and a soccer team kicking around a ball. I was due to meet a friend for a bit of a picnic, so, after walking a little in the hills and meandering around taking tons of photographs (having discovered a new setting on my camera that simply had to be tried out), I headed for the stadium. I wasn’t sure where to find a quiet spot to spread out my blanket because there didn’t seem to be many lawns so I thought I’d sit in the stands for a bit and get my breath back before trying again.
As I walked up the steps to the top of the stands, I stepped into glorious sunshine. I don’t think I had really thought about how long it had been since I had been outdoors without a long-sleeved top of some sort. It isn’t the kind of thing one thinks about much. On Saturday afternoon, for the first time in months and months, I took off the jackets and jerseys and layers and sat in the spring sunshine in just a T-shirt. It was glorious.
I found a quiet, flat patch of grass about half-way up the stands and spread out my orange blanket that came with me all the way from South Africa and proved so multi-functional over the years. My friend was later than she expected to be, but I hardly noticed as I lay on my blanket and read a book with the sunshine on my back. In a world where it rains so much of the time and is overcast even when it isn’t raining, and where my working hours mean that I only get home around 11pm and so sleep through a lot of the daylight, an hour or two of being outside and warm and curled up like a kitten in the sun is just gorgeous.
The sun was starting to drop towards the horizon and workmen setting up a stage in the middle of the stadium/arena as we packed up to head home, slanting rays of light filtering through the cherry blossom trees to follow us to the bus stop. Since then, there has been one more day of warmth in between the chilly (and today downright cold) weather. I’m really hoping it changes properly soon and that there will be plenty more picnic-weather-Saturdays in my last few months in Korea.