Nearly here

This morning on my little amble round the Library Gardens I saw birds with twigs in their beaks for the first time this spring.

It must be the longer daylight hours that makes them feel all domestic and up for some DIY: it has that sort of effect on Mark as well. Over the last few days the cold wet weather has turned first to snow, and then to cold dry weather, and he  has put on a big quilted boiler suit and a woolly hat over his bald patch, and is building a storage shed and workshop space for tools in the back garden. He has promised me that this will enable him to tile the kitchen with minimal mess, because he will be able to cut tiles and saw shelves outside instead of on the carpet: although I am not very convinced. Nothing Mark ever does involves minimal mess, and mostly there is a great deal of oil or dust or both.

I am pleased, however, because it means I will be able to reclaim possession of the existing shed which has windows, in time for seed planting in the next couple of weeks. It is a better place for seeds than any of the windowsills in the house because it is cooler and lighter and seedlings will grow slowly and sturdily and not bolt the way they do when central heating is helping them along, and it will not be a tearful disaster if I forget to water them for a day or two.

There is not much more winter to go now. The bulbs in the garden are all poking green shoots through now, and of course this is the place to be if you like daffodils, which I do, very much. The bird-nesting is ace if you have got time to watch any of it: they hoover up every loose twig and fallen stick from everywhere, and stuff them down people’s chimneys and under the eaves and inside the gutters. They don’t seem to have much concept of size and manoeuvrability in their enthusiasm either: I saw one newly-married crow fall off our washing line last year in his desperation to prove his masculinity by bringing the biggest possible stick.

The magpies and jackdaws collect shiny things as well: which seems to be the bird equivalent of having an interior designer do your front room and getting Ideal Homes Magazine to come and take pictures of it. Look how marvellously successful I am, come and sit on my eggs, babe: you can have a wonderful glittering nest jewelled with old paper clips and bits of tin foil and beads and 5p pieces. It is gorgeous to see them so proud and enthusiastic and determined to impress each other.

Mark courted me in a very similar sort of way,  When I lived in Coniston I had a very productive vegetable patch which was my pride and obsessive joy. I was first inspired to fall in love with him when he thoughtfully brought me a trailer load of rotted horse muck. I thought at the time that this was a hopelessly romantic deed, and by the time he had helped lay the new path and built some new shelves for the greenhouse I was lost. Young people reading this, take note: it is surprising what you will come to value once you get past thirty.

He has not let me down in the course of our gardening activities ever since. He has built raised flower beds and laid a lawn in the sunny patches of our tiny yard, which was a gravelly car parking bay when we bought the house, and I have planted lavender and sage and bay and apple mint and fennel and delphiniums and sweet peas and lupins. He has laid a dark red brick path with a herringbone pattern to add some colour to our Lake District slate grey landscape, even in March, and he has done all of these things so well that mostly I manage to forgive him for his other occasional additions to the garden in the shape of stacks of old tyres or rusting axles or useful things he has found in skips.

It is still not quite spring in our garden, although like the birds we have started nesting enthusiastically now, Mark with his shed and me with my sacks of farm poo ready for the first stirrings of beautiful green leaves and golden daffodils and violets and bluebells, in a few more weeks we will be throwing open the windows and hanging out the washing and loitering around chattering to passing neighbours and feeling sun-warmed and cheerful and pleased to be alive.

It is beyond wonderful. We have got almost to the end of another winter, and the long dark days of hoods and mittens and trudging with my face against the wind are almost done. The sun is shining today: and spring is nearly…nearly here.

 Just add a season…