Spring Comes To The Garden

In the strange year that is 2020, it's good to know that some things don't change......like the inevitability of the change of seasons. We had a weird winter this year with the almost unknown phenomenon of a quite heavy snowfall in Launceston. I'm still discovering things in my garden that were broken in that storm! The sound of breaking branches woke me in the middle of that snowy night and I rushed outside in pyjamas and gumboots to take a few photos of this once-in-a-hundred-year event.

But, inevitably, spring has rolled around again and quite early this year. The blossoms started to appear almost a month early and the blooming has been wonderful! I'm hopeful of some good fruit yields this summer with lots of blossom on the plum and apricot trees as well as the berry bushes.

Maybe spring is my favourite season - I like the changeability, the wind, the increasing sunshine and longer days and the way there are noticeable changes day by day. 

The backyard is just bursting into leaf - in a few weeks this will be green and shady and I will be regretting that I didn't dig more and sooner for vegetables! It ALWAYS catches me by surprise. 

 

Small Things

I must admit that small things give me a great deal of pleasure: a house filled with the smell of bread baking, a tree bursting into blossom, a contented cat asleep by the fire, home-grown vegetables and fruit and a line full of washing flapping in the sun and wind...........

About that last thing -  When I moved into this house coming up to five years ago, I found that the original washing line was quite decrepit, with broken wires, bent arms and it was stuck halfway down an inaccessible ivy-filled bank. I promised myself in those first few weeks that I would replace it. Soon.

As things panned out, there was always something more pressing to be done and money needed for other things, so it's taken almost five years to get it done! In that time, I've been drying my washing on a couple of clothes horses, which blow over in a gust and don't ask me about sheets taking days to dry! Oh, yes, I don't have an electric dryer for several reasons - expensive to run, prone to starting house fires if you are not ever-vigilant about cleaning the lint filter and the clothes just don't smell like sunshine. Yes, I'm an obstinate old biddy! 

But done it is now - I went out and bought a Hills Hoist (this is still the original company that designed the first rotary clothesline here in Australia, though I imagine they are manufactured offshore these days, like pretty much everything, more's the pity). I had to dig quite a deep hole to house the socket which has been concreted in place.......it's not going anywhere! So it's standing proudly in the middle of my patch of lawn and I dried my first load of washing this morning! It's removable, so when I want full use of the lawn, I simply have to take it out of the socket. Ah.......the pleasure!