Spring scenes

The morning routine: up too early because I forgot to close the shutters and dawn comes very early these days. Climb sleepily into clothes. Stagger to the kitchen. Kettle on.

Can you believe that for the first 52 years of my life I eschewed coffee?  Now I can’t kick start my brain without it.

Well I could. And I did.  And boy do I realize it is the equivalent of artificial fertilizer.

I ought to go to bed earlier and rest properly. But this is Spring. Mad frenzy of work in the daylight hours. You can stay out there until 9pm before it gets too dark to see.

Wade through toast and peanut butter and then anoint myself ready for a havyfever, tick season event.

Still reeling from Lisa’s tick bite / Lyme scare story I have added my favourite tick repellent spray to my morning toilette.  It actually smells gorgeous. Which is good because my hayfever nasal spray doesn’t.

And for my second scene of spring I bring you the first mow of the season.

I even remembered to trickle charge the mower the day before.  What? Electricity for a mower?  My old Viking died after ten years of solid way too challenging service.

So when it came for a new one I went for the similar model and the same brand. But this one had been tweaked. No more yanking on the starter chord – just turn a key.

You know how it is when you don’t realize you really, really needed something labour saving until you have it?

It’s a joy.

I positively twinkle through the six hours of mowing it takes to turn this garden into something more pleasing.

I could have gone to the lower terraces – they are in sore need of a mow to cut the heads off the nascent blackthorn, cherry seedlings, chestnut saplings and brambles that are trying to grow in my lawns.

But in spring you can’t neglect all the hundreds of other things on the list. So I’ll try and get down to the lower terraces before the grass grows to knee high and I have to resort to the strimmer.

Right now I have exactly six minutes before Bebère and Etienne arrive to rebuild our falling down pergola in the courtyard. And they don’t start their working day here on this farm without their favourite elixir – coffee.