Spring has sprung and winter is over! I say this as I prepare to leave the house in freezing conditions knowing that I need to allow enough time to defrost my windscreen before I depart from my driveway. Apparently the weather didn’t get the memo- there was no instantaneous end to winter just because the calendar flicked over to a new month on the calendar.
I do like this time of year. The days are starting to get longer, it isn’t as cold as often and the run up to summer starts. It is like the winter hibernation that comes out of it being so cold and dark is coming to an end. Apart from the beginning of the build up to summer, and the special time of year that is Christmas and New Year’s, Spring is a special time in its own right. The garden starts to come alive. During the winter, not much happens in the garden on two fronts. Firstly, we don’t spend much time out there as it is too cold. Secondly, things don’t grow much. In the last week or so though, everything has started to come alive. The plants that go dormant in the cold are starting to bud again and some have even already flowered. Our small peach tree on the back porch is already looking spectacular with its pink flowers which have bloomed. Everyday there is something new to see in the garden. Something that has grown, something that has new buds on it or something where the flowers have blossomed. You can go on a discovery tour every day to see what is new.
The disadvantage of the growth in the garden is that it is time to get back out there and do some work! Time to start pulling out the weeds that are also growing (why is it that they seem to grow faster than the plants?) and to tame the plants that are growing too fast or where they shouldn’t be. Time to set the plans of what we want to achieve in the garden before next winter arrives and everything goes back to being dormant again. The needing to do some work in the garden though still has its advantages from a perspective of getting back out into the sunshine and enjoying the outdoors.
The other special time about spring is that it marks the beginning of barbeque season. A time when dinner can involve chucking a couple of steaks on the barbeque and sitting outside to enjoy eating it while looking at the ever evolving, newly budding garden. Where dinner or a weekend lunch becomes a time where friends come over to enjoy a barbeque and relax outside.
So, we have survived another Canberra winter, the garden is blooming and I think that means that it is definitely time to check the gas bottle and break out the barbeque again!