Spring came last Sunday

There was a spark in the air a week ago - Thursday morning, to be exact, at some time before 9 am, when I found myself bounding towards the dentist with a spring in my step and a smile on my face. Odd, to say the least. No matter - I left the dentist's unscathed and the smile remained. On Sunday there I was - in the the freezing garden brushing leaves and mucking out the bird feeding area - and looking about with a speculative eye. There are plans for that there garden, and I was seeing the outcomes in the clear, sharp air as if they had already been achieved. I was also thrilled to see that the snowdrops, many of which had been removed to allow for the construction of the fish pond last summer, had staged a revolution, and that a small clump were flowering in protest at the foot of the wall. In the eternal battle of goldfish versus snowdrop, the latter are coming out fighting.

On the fish front, it is good to see that some of the bolder ones have woken up a little and come out to inspect the policies after the depredations of winter. The golden koi in particular seems to be in training - either that or the water is very cold away from the comfort of the dark corner near the pump, and he has to do his rounds before he stiffens up! There have been two casualities over the cold months - or two that I know about - Donna, the fancy tailed goldfish who had been the star of the whisky barrel pond for some years, gracefully handed in her cards before Christmas, and one of the white scaled goldfish found itself frozen to the surface a couple of weeks ago. It was ailing before then, obviously, but sadly was not able to recover. The sardine, as Elisabet insists on calling it, makes stately progress across the bottom of the pond from time to time, with his retinue of little blue jobs busily in his wake. (And no, just for today I cannot remember the proper name of the blue mottled fish which are his companions, but I will soon!)

And now I have to go into Edinburgh - the daffodils below the Castle must be near to flowering. I shall have a look.