After years of working in offices, I never forget to be grateful for the way that my life has changed to allow me to firstly work as a gardener and be outside in the fresh air, and now to be based at home working with my husband in his business and writing and knitting as Winwick Mum. Today, the sun is shining and I have moved my office outside. I'm trying to remember to drink more water (which is great, except that I keep needing to go to the loo!) and out of the corner of my eye I can see the washing gently waving on the washing line and the bees buzzing around the flowers. One of the cats is sunning herself on the bench whilst the other has taken up residence in an empty planter. He thinks that if he shuts his eyes and he can't see you, then you can't see him despite the fact that he's the oddest-looking furry plant in the garden.
Hellooo! How are you doing on this Sunday afternoon? I've been out in the garden but the rain has started so I've come in for a while to see if it goes off and thought this would be a good moment for us to catch up. I hope you've had a lovely week! It's back to school for us tomorrow; I've stopped asking small daughter if she's finished her homework yet as I just get a wave of the hand and some vague muttering whenever I do, so I've decided to let her get on with it and face the music if she's not done it. I don't miss having to do homework at all so I can understand why she'd put it off - but I also remember leaving it till the last minute and that's not fun at all! Anyway, let me show you what I've been up to this morning. I've been cutting the grass (gardening is all about illusion - people will only focus on what you show them, so if you ever need to impress quickly, cut the grass first!) and ripping out more miles of ivy. I've got nettles growing up in between it now so they've been coming out too. Don't let anyone tell you that spring nettles don't have much of a sting because that's not true! I also found some treasures ... The Magnolia stellata (star magnolia) is finally in flower - it's a few weeks later than usual but is making up for it with masses of beautiful fragrant blooms ...
We're half way through small daughter's school Easter holidays, and we've got plenty done. There has been bedroom tidying (long-overdue), Easter egg eating (there has to be some reward for the bedroom tidying!), and plenty of outdoors-ing, thanks to the weather not being as bad as it could be. I've been able to persuade small daughter to come on some longer walks with the dog and me (mostly, I suspect, because if she's out with me she's not having to tidy her room), and Thursday was a great day for it. We saw blue skies and even some sunshine - oh, doesn't it feel wonderful to feel it on your face? - and everywhere there were signs of spring.
