Of all the seasons, there is something deliciously possessive about spring. A prize one is gifted after enduring an unrelentingly cold, bitter, wet and windy winter. We have arduously waited, and waited some more, for this moment to arrive (always making an entrance at the most unexpected time, and all the better because of it). For streets lined with once naked trees now decorated in blossom. A chorus of birdsong. Dusk at 8.33pm. Public gardens perfumed with the scent of a blanket of roses. Still skies. Soft and idyll Sunday mornings. Dressed in light-as-air cotton. Warm sunshine reunited with bare skin. When reading in the park and other outdoor pursuits become a thing of unspeakable pleasure. When everything feels…new again.

This furtive, albeit somewhat fleeting, feeling is deeply rooted in JOUISSANCE's DNA. With EN PLEIN AIR evoking the thrill of amorous alfresco exploits, drawing inspiration from Catherine M.’s own sexual awakening as chronicled in her exquisite 2001 memoir The Sexual Life of Catherine M. And so, it seems only fitting that this month in our Diary we are celebrating the eternal magic of spring and its myriad shades. In all its transportive and transformative glory.

Summer days can go by in a hypnotic haze. Intense. Intoxicatingly so at times. Its younger sibling, however, is distinctly more tender in nature. Testing the waters. We talk of spring ‘flings’, a flirtation and full of endless possibility, rather than buried deep in the throes of summer love’s heated passion.

It is a time ripe for romance, most definitely (with what, or with whom, is entirely your choosing), but one rooted in the exploratory stage, the first chapter. The thing that makes you stop and look around and listen a little while longer. It is when you are opposite a stranger you like and you’re so close to their mouth you can feel the warmth of their breath on yours. It is the slow dance that is the almost-kiss. As poet Kyla Jamieson puts it in My Sexual Orientation Is Spring.

For some, spring is an exercise in embracing a new kind of solitude. A gentler version. A room with a different view. Take, for instance, Elizabeth von Arnim’s 1922 novel, The Enchanted April, whereby four mismatched Englishwomen rent a medieval castle on the Italian coast for a month, seduced by the promise of “wisteria and sunshine.” Over time, days that stretch out where there is seemingly little action occurring, each character finds they are transformed somehow by the splendour and romance of their surroundings. Lost and found. As though a new season has shined a spotlight on a new picture, full of colour, and previously missed details: joy, in other words.

For many artists, the season has served as the ultimate muse. A tool to translate one’s hopefulness in love’s early bloom (see Simon & Garfunkul’s lyrics “April, come she will / When streams are ripe and swelled with rain”, Donna Summer’s Spring Affair or Françoise Hardy’s sentimental 1970 ballad, Soleil. Providing the perfect setting for Monet’s Springtime, depicting his first wife, Camille, serenely seated reading her book en plein air, underneath a canopy of lilacs.

Of course, before all of this, there was Sandro Botticelli’s Primavera (also known as ‘Allegory of Spring’), believed to be painted around 1482. It is impossible not to be mesmerised by its abundant beauty.

Far from self-conscious, it is a picture infused with power. Depicting a group of mostly female mythological figures, including Venus (the goddess of love) and Flora (the goddess of flowers) in an orange grove, surrounded by over 138 different species of plant. And whilst the painting has been shrouded in enigma for centuries – due to its unknown original title, and varying interpretations –many read the rich and aromatic display as a paean to love and the renewal of nature.

And yet, spring is not just simply about beauty. It is about the wonderment of transformation. Accepting the fragility in life. Embracing fully formed gratitude. It is not just about waking up and smelling the roses, it is about waking up and paying attention to life. All of it.

One could say there is a shade of melancholy to the months of March until June. So delicate and delightful, though knowing that it will eventually come to pass. Transition into something else. The trick is, like any great love, to enjoy all that it feeds you as it is happening in real time. Notice how your body feels, how the light changes, the fragranced air, those in-between moments.

Be more Anaïs Nin, as she notes in one of her early diaries:

“Spring evening, soft and balmy and beautiful,” she writes.

“The smell of the earth rose in the stillness like a dream cloud.”

Life moves pretty fast, savour the good stuff. The rest can wait.