Spring!

March 5

Yesterday, all of a sudden, we experienced the first day of spring! On Sunday it was still cold and grey. And the nights are still very cold indeed. Monday morning the sun miraculously rose in a cloudless sky and shone on us all day long, as it has today. So I tackled the garden and first did the things I do not really enjoy doing: pruning the roses which have fierce thorns, the ramblers and the wild wysteria. Now is the time, for they are not in leaf yet. Once they are, it is a tangle and I wouldn't know where to begin. I feel very virtuous indeed, for I also cleaned the pond and took out a lot of oxygen plants, which are marvellous to keep the water clear, but they are very enthusiastic growers and in no time convert the pond into a bog. So before the frogs come back and deposit their spawn on the plants after a few weeks of wild orgies and indiscriminate coupling, I needed to take a lot of aquatic plants out. I feel like a true farmer, who has this duty to clean ditches twice a year. Well, I did it!

Meanwhile the botanic crocuses in the garden had their delicate lilac and blue petals wide open to the sun. They reproduce themselves, so there are more every year which is a joy to the eye. After the snowdrops and the hellebores, they are the first colourful promises of spring.

It is amazing that only two weeks ago this is what my windows looked like: covered in black ice!

Looking out into the garden