The garden emerges from the snow

Could it be? The snow is melting at last. And boy this has been a long week.  I ventured out this afternoon with my camera to record the miracle of seeing brown again. One can tire of  endless vistas of white.

Actually the excitement started this morning when I opened the shutters and thought it was raining. Incessant dripping was pattering onto the terrace; and I realised it was the snow melting from the roof.

Hallelujah. No more death trap icicles to worry about.  That is a hangover from all those years of living in Moscow – we lived in dread of the irony (and the pain) of being impaled by falling icicles from buildings. A handful of people were killed that way every winter. And I have been stepping smartly around the icicles close to the roof near the front door for a week.

It is still much too cold to actually work outdoors. Each morning I consult my A4 sized garden list, sigh, and put it away. But soon, I hope there will be more on the action front and less on the gazing wistfully out at a wintry landscape.

One creature who is back to his routine is Artur. He has reclaimed ‘his’ potting shed now that the snow has been shovelled off the clear polycarbonate roof.  And he has settled down to a new location. A cardboard box lined in a freshly laundered sweater.

He stays in the box to catch the morning sun, and then moves over to the other side for his afternoon snoozing.  I have covered all my plants under this most attractive fleece blanket. And note the small cashmere sweater nest right in the middle.

I have given up scolding him for sleeping on my seedlings. He’s never going to change the habits of years. Now I just clear him a space and set up a comfortable blanket or sweater and he leaves the plants alone.

I must say that I miss him terribly after his three days inside our home.   We were cat sitting for Jean Daniel and as he was away, we had to keep him safe and warm from the storm.  I couldn’t leave him in the cold potting shed on his own.  And he took to inside living with such alacrity.  Snoozing in front of the fire. Moving to a chair in my office when he overheated and needed somewhere cooler to perch.  And the snoring and purring that kept me smiling whenever I caught sight of the little bundle of fluff all curled up and happy.

Boy do I need my own, full time pet. But that can’t happen if I have to travel to London every month.  It was a wrench to walk him back to his home through the melting snow.