Winter is finally over, out here on the Thames Delta. Now begins the season where I can type outside when I get up in the…afternoon. Except now I am less likely to sleep like an angrily hibernating bear with damp in his bones and frost on his knackers. Winter went on several weeks too long, in this part of the world. Just a few days ago it was five degrees and dropping when I shambled outside at noon, and yesterday my fingers were too cold to operate properly in the garden at 1pm.

But now winter has broken. I started the mental and virtual spring cleaning a couple of weeks ago. Now I can clear the garden, build the mini-greenhouse, prepare the vegetable beds, and be productive on the keyboard from the first coffee, rather than the third coffee and then forty minutes carefully warming my blue talons until they can reliably clack on machines again.

Living with the seasons isn’t such a bad thing. The kid and I marked the final end of winter by roasting a chicken and drinking a bottle of wine. In a few months, I’ll be flavouring water for the fridge jugs, and, a couple of months after that, I’ll be drying herbs and vegetables and making oils for the winter. In some things, you just have to accept that the sky keeps spinning and this is the dirt you stand on.

Reading: LANDMARKS, Robert Macfarlane: (UK) (US)