Mrs Blue Skies

The first day of spring is here at last.  The evenings are slowly getting lighter and it’s almost time for the clocks to take their annual spring forward, and for J to start his twice yearly moaning about how it always takes his body a week to readjust to the new time.

The harbingers of spring have been very obvious to me this year, perhaps because I’m not stuck in an office all day I’ve noticed the days getting longer, we’ve had the pleasure of the company of some rather adorable lambs, and last night was 2017’s first sighting of our bats – they were out and about surprisingly early and so the kids got to stare in wonderment at them fluttering around the yard alongside me.  I’ve also been watching the skies waiting for the first arrivals of the swallows; they normally nest in our outbuildings, and this year I’d like to try and deter them from the workshop, as I don’t want myself, or the plants and furniture in there, covered in bird poo and fecal sacks, so attempting to block off access might be on the cards this weekend.  The daffodils have also been opening their lovely golden flowers up along the lane, and the buds on the trees and bushes are slowly bursting into leaf.

We’ve even got some lovely little purple flowers in the back garden, I’m not sure what they are as J and the kids planted the bulbs last autumn, but they add a nice bit of colour to an otherwise drab back garden (the picture is rubbish, but I promise they are purple).

All this springiness is giving me an itch to get the garden sorted, I took the kids to B&Q earlier and wandered around the garden centre eyeing up prospective plants for the flower bed.  However, as the flowerbed looks more like a desolate waste ground at the minute, I decided to hold off any purchases until J has the rotavator fixed, and the soil looking a little more inviting.

Flower bed to be disguised as arid wasteland

We also have some purchases we made earlier this year, half dead Clematises and Jasmine that were ridiculously cheap (probably because they were barely clinging on to life), in the stables waiting to be planted, and so I want to get them in to get an idea of what space we have left.

The veg patch remains untouched since last week, due to the inconsiderate rainfall over the last few days, but I’m hoping to get back onto it, in the next day or so, to start the next trench.  The sweet peas in the workshop are doing really well, and so I think the sooner we can get the patch finished and them into their new home, the better.

Now spring is here, this means we have been living here for a taste of all the seasons, admittedly we are at the beginning of spring and we moved in at the end of summer, but still, I think a landmark has been reached.  As the days are slowly getting warmer, it’s just giving us a taste of what’s to come, we’re already getting excited about the warmer days when we can eat outside – particularly because it means I don’t have to clean up after the kids who seem to think messy eating is a competition held three times a day.  Or perhaps they just like testing out my cleaning prowess, all good preparation for the new job (yes, I got the job!).