Spring Is In The Air...
Not quite fully on the ground yet, but definitely in the air, there was a day last week when I caught it, the soft touch of a warmer breeze, a smell of pale, fresh green. You can see it here and there, buds swelling on the trees and bushes, a scattering of flowers cautiously sticking their heads out, the faint fuzz of new leaves on the hawthorn, hear it in the growing dawn chorus. The Vernal Equinox was last week (or as The Wife and I occasionally call it, the Venereal Equinox, well, there's a lot of shagging going on out there at the moment) and I for one am very glad to see it.
Late winter this year has been a hard one, what with storms and "Beast from the East", the mass of cold air that swept over from Russia (I blame Putin), spring has been a long time in coming. Some people have amusingly described winter this year as someone you're having a big row with who storms out of the room, then storms back in yelling "And another thing...!"
We've still got a way to go yet, there's one more "mini-beast" sweeping in from the continent that'll hit us over Easter, with quite a bit of snow forecast in some few places, but I think... no, I feel that we're firmly on the way now. The clocks change this weekend to what is optimistically called "British Summer Time". Ha ha. A week or so of darker mornings, but longer evenings, maybe get a few after-dinner walks in around the local park, perhaps even on the gold course across the road if it's dry and we can avoid the golfers (it's Corporation of London land, part of Epping Forest basically, so there are walking rights).
Spring has not exactly sprung, but it's refusing to be kept down.
That'll do for now.
Late winter this year has been a hard one, what with storms and "Beast from the East", the mass of cold air that swept over from Russia (I blame Putin), spring has been a long time in coming. Some people have amusingly described winter this year as someone you're having a big row with who storms out of the room, then storms back in yelling "And another thing...!"
We've still got a way to go yet, there's one more "mini-beast" sweeping in from the continent that'll hit us over Easter, with quite a bit of snow forecast in some few places, but I think... no, I feel that we're firmly on the way now. The clocks change this weekend to what is optimistically called "British Summer Time". Ha ha. A week or so of darker mornings, but longer evenings, maybe get a few after-dinner walks in around the local park, perhaps even on the gold course across the road if it's dry and we can avoid the golfers (it's Corporation of London land, part of Epping Forest basically, so there are walking rights).
Spring has not exactly sprung, but it's refusing to be kept down.
That'll do for now.