Early Spring flowers

Now that’s a treat. It’s as if I brought a bit of Australia back home in the hand luggage.

The mimosa seedlings have flowered.

Sorry I couldn’t air brush the restraining blue and black tape from the shot. (Repurposed swimming pool chords.). They have put on such fast growth that the whole shape needs training before they grow utterly wonky and vex me for years to come.

I’m just thrilled they didn’t get slammed by the hard winter weather.

The mimosas are flowering all over the region. I know that because I did the long plod to the mairie’s office yesterday to lodge some overdue documents (solar panel proof of completion of works). It’s a ten kilometre round trip.

And round as in very, very down then up the mountains. There are heaps of dead pine trees over the paths; it’s a feature of the mountains right now. These pines expired a few years back and the hard drought of last summer plus good strong winds mean you do have to look up and calculate the peril when you walk through the forest.

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And work on your limbo moves to get around the beasts.

I was limping and footsore when I finally emerged on the home straight. Note to self. Avoid sciatica by avoiding this long walk so soon after travelling.

It was a glorious early spring day. Absolutely freezing and with snow flurries. And was it just on the weekend I was trying to avoid sunburn and heat stroke? Sigh.

But that will teach me for going away for a whole month to the summer. Had I stayed put on the farm I would have been revelling in the slightly less frozen temperatures on the walk and peering hard for signs of spring.

Thank goodness for early flowering narcissus varieties.

And sheltered almond blossom.

I will be doing more of a lap around the farm in the next few days. (A bit glued to my desk with the day job right now.)

But the deer can’t reach most of the kale in the top potager, so we are feasting while we wait for the seed sowing fest and real season to begin.

And getting the metal netting for the sides of these raised beds is definitely on my to do list. I just can’t face Madame Felix at the hardware store just yet after a glorious indulgent month away.