Simple pleasures of this February

Sunshine on a winter day.

Getting shot by a tangerine and smelling of citrus for the rest of the day.

Owning Frankentop.

Discovering Tumblr (even if I am a bit foxed by it)

Renner-fetish!

Snowdrops!

Doing some drawing again.

Knowing I am partway through chapter nine of "Gold Hawk" and the revisions are flowing well.

Meeting new interesting people.

Crocuses!

Being able to walk home in daylight.

Remembering crying into my binoculars at “Onegin” last week.

Daffodils!

“The Golden Cat” – finally!

Eviscerating lychees with my tongue.

Getting busier again at work.

Trade Fairs!

Orchids!

I love my life.

Tea-stains and drama queens

Oof, it's been a hectic Friday.

I'm not quite sure why, but we've had a solid streamm of bizarre enquiries coming in to the office - the sort where one puts the 'phone down and says "God, poor woman!", and the sort where one puts the 'phone down and says "Good grief, what a weird question!", in about equal quantities. We're short-staffed, and it has all seemed a bit frantic at times.

To add to this, first thing this morning I had a message from my stepmum saying Baby Bro had been admitted to hospital with something gone wrong following his recent kidney op - it later turned out he was okay, but it gave us all a couple of hours worrying. Not to put too fine a point on it, he was panicking unecessarily after waking up in pain. It's not actually that unnatural a reaction, when you think about it, but apparently this is par for the course; it's going to happen for the next few weeks and he is just going to have to put up with it. Lucky lad; not only in pain but having the casualty doctor imply he's a drama queen as well... I bet he enjoyed that. NOT.

Have made an interesting discovery, after making a cup of tea in a hurry without washing my mug (yes, I know that's disgusting). The previous cup of tea had been ordinary black china tea - I never have milk (why spoil good tea?) - and I shoved a cranberry tea bag in on top and added the boiling water.

By the time I came to drink it, the tannin stains from the China tea, which normally require plenty of soap and scrubbing to shift, had almost completely vanished. One is always reading about the acidic properties of fruit-based herbal teas, and I think I may have just demonstrated it (& then drunk the evidence - ooh, lovely, tasty tannins, delicious...). Another Science Experiment You Can Eat, perhaps?

But at least the sun shone and the crocuses and snowdrops, and the very first daffodils, are looking beautiful... It's possibly my favourite time of year - from Imbolc to Beltane, the Wakening Quarter.

First tiny signs of spring!

Today as I was drawing my curtains onto the dark pre-dawn light, I heard, as well as the usual winter chorus of robins, a blackbird. No mistaking that melodious alto flute amid all the high whistles. Robins call and sing all winter but the other songbirds don't start until in the spring a young bird's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love (apologies to Tennyson's ghost)... So a blackbird singing in the morning gloom is a sweet sign of spring. At work today I have been admiring the early snowdrops, a glorious sight especially as it is a sunny day (if bitterly cold again) and then on my way out to get a sandwich at lunch I saw the first few brave little pale crocuses. The mild weather last week must have encouraged them (and this colder patch will probably stop them in their tracks again!). It is such a cheering sight, these first little quiverings of spring, as the cycle of the seasons turns steadily on.

Lunch break

I went out, intending just to buy a sandwich in the Orangery (Kew's main restaurant) and got seduced into taking a little walk. It's milder than a couple of days ago, though it drizzled on me pretty steadily; but there were birds singing in the bare trees, and odd wafts of scent from winter-flowering shrubs, and masses of snowdrops are now out. The first Crocus thomasinianus are appearing, too, like crowds of little mauve ghosts in the ragged grass. The air was cool and misty, a mistle thrush made drilling alarm calls at me from the lilac garden, and under the big cedar of Lebanon where I hid for a while from the rain the ground was warm rust-orange with fallen cone scales. It's a beautiful, damp, be-here-now spring day, when one can see the very earliest peepings-forth of the energy of growth, of life recreating itself endlessly, all around. Blessed be; and (since it's Mahashivratri today) om namyo Shivayai...