Round the corner

It might just be because the sun is shining for the second day in a row (nice weather at a weekend? Unheard of!), but it definitely feels like Spring is peeking round the corner. Not quite here yet – there is still a bit of ice in the wind (particularly when you are facing into it for half an hour at 4pm waiting for someone to try to score a goal), but that ice is starting to melt. The trees are still bare, but some of the bushes on the walk to the station are starting to bud – one has a few flowers hidden amongst its thorns, and one is coated with the bright green of new leaves.

I did some repotting at the beginning of January – the flat we are in doesn’t have a garden, but does have a garden path, so I have a number of plant pots with various bulbs in outside the front door. The gladioli are shooting up so fast that you can almost see them growing, and I’m sure that a couple of the daffodils are also starting to peek above the surface. What has surprised me is how fast the garlic is coming up – my mother-in-law gave me a bulb to plant out – I realised with about five cloves left that I probably ought to actually put some in soil, rather than just eating it, so there are three cloves in a pot. One of them has already broken the surface, and I’m now left wondering how you can tell when garlic is ready? I’ve never planted it before, so have no idea of when I’ll be able to dig it up and eat! (probably when the neighbours start complaining about the smell…)

The sun is streaming through the window right now (I’ve had to draw the curtain slightly so that I can see the computer screen), and the warmth inside the flat is lovely. Even better was the rather surprised observation from one of my colleagues this week; “It’s half past four, and it’s still light!” Even though the turning of the seasons is inevitable, it still comes as such a wonderful feeling to know that the back of Winter has been broken, and that the sunshine (and showers) of Spring is (are? Grammatically do you have to count something in brackets for is/are in a sentence?) waiting for us. It makes the walk to work a bit more bearable.