Spring

A lot of my posts on here have been rants.  This isn’t because I am permanently in ranting mood.  It’s just that, when I’m feeling cheerful, I mostly write stories instead, whereas, when something has wound me up, I feel the need to work it out in this blog.

But right now, I just want to tell you about spring, and about feeling happy.

A week and a half ago, I left Somerset in winter, and I came back ten days later to find it in spring.  Admittedly, when I say winter, I don’t mean in the thick snow we’d had at the beginning of February.

No, by halfway through this month, I could see that the snowdrops of January

had been joined by crocuses

and even celandines.

The woods were green and mossy and beautiful to walk in.

But even so, when I came down to Southampton, I had to re-set my mental calendar to get used to the fact that Southampton, being both a city and on the south coast, was in full, daffodil-filled, blossoming-cherry-tree spring mode.

In truth, I had been apprehensive about coming down to Southampton to visit my parents and catch up on seeing friends at all.  The last time I had done this had been last August, accompanied for part of the visit by my Beloved Partner, and I had still managed to drive a good friend to distraction during what was supposed to be a relaxing walk along the Itchen.  After the Beloved had needed to go home, I had become rapidly more emotionally unstable and exasperated my parents by nagging them about things that had happened decades ago.

This time, I was on my own for most of the visit, and managed to enjoy a peaceful week and a half of staying with my parents, having dinner with each of my brothers, catching up on visiting numerous friends, and going to church twice, without becoming overwrought or quarrelling with anyone.  Probably it helped that I was relaxed enough to listen to people without dominating the conversation with my anxieties – after all, I’ve got this blog to rant on.

The Beloved came down for a couple of days, and we had a chance to visit the City Art Gallery and look at drawings by Leonardo da Vinci and the modern artist Ewan (look at his Instagram account by all means, but not all of it is suitable for family viewing).  By the time we left, we were confident that we could tell the difference between Leonardo da Vinci

and Leonardo the Mutant Ninja Turtle.

I hadn’t expected everything to go so peacefully.  But what I had expected even less was that by the time I returned, spring would have caught up with Somerset, and our own garden would have open daffodils

and a cherry tree in full bloom.

I went to see whether the bulbs I had planted last autumn had decided to flower.  They hadn’t, but the lungwort I had failed to uproot was looking beautifully healthy, and proving as popular with the bees

as the daffodils are

and as the cherry tree is with the butterflies.

The most surprising thing about this was that it made me want to spring into action.  In winter, any kind of tidying up felt like a terrible effort: all I wanted to do was huddle at my desk with a heater underneath and endless mugs of tea, reading (or, if I was feeling very energetic, possibly writing) fanfiction.  We hadn’t even got round to taking the Christmas cards down, having decided to leave them up until Twelfth Night, until Candlemas, until Shrove Tuesday…

But now, coming home on a warm, sunny spring day, and seeing the litter dropped along the roadside near my house, all I wanted to do was go in, get a bin-liner and start tidying up.

When I’d filled a bag, I planted spring onion and carrot seeds in one of the tubs in our yard (we don’t have much of an actual garden with flowerbeds, apart from the shady part at the back where I’d tried planting snowdrop and crocus bulbs).  Then I got on with the washing-up that the Beloved hadn’t quite got round to doing in the past week.  (I’m not complaining – he works, and I’d had a week of idling in which my mum insisted on cooking for me and washing up.)

I know most people get far more done in the average day than I manage, whether they’re in the mood for it or not.  But I love the way that spring makes getting on with things feel enjoyable rather than a chore.  I love the way spring is.  That’s all.