Spring Cleaning the Mind

It might just be me, but it feels like recent winters have lasted a long, dark time. It feels like it’s been cold forever, even though I know logically that this winter has been a lot milder than last year’s deep chill.

But yesterday morning was the first time the thermometer showed double figures when I got up first thing. I walked to work with my coat unbuttoned, just outside the school gates was a single snowdrop, and I started noticing buds and green shoots poking through. Birds are singing everywhere. It’s amazing - even in this age of central heating, climate controlled offices, hot water in an instant, when the vast majority of the population aren’t permanently cold during the winter - there’s something about the promise of warm weather, the first signs of spring, that can lift you. It seems like there’s something wired in our ancestral brains, that ignores our modern lives, and senses relief at the lengthening days, the warm sun on our skin. Even if we get another cold snap, spring is on its way.

Out in the garden, the buds on the magnolia tree are showing the first signs of uncurling, the crocuses are poking through last year’s withered growth, and in the thick ivy that covers the fence between us and our neighbours, a pair of blackbirds have built a nest.

And the mind starts to unwind too. I start thinking beyond the confines of the winter house, the proverbial huddling round the fire. Spring cleaning the mind. I start thinking about jobs to do, clearing the garden, spring planting, days out with the kids, the bees up at the Farmshare, new projects, plans. Plenty to do.

Yep, it feels like spring is in the air.

Dawn Pics by JC