More apricity please!

Good grief – it is so miserable here at the moment!  It must have been raining for the past 24 hours.  Ridiculous… it’s nearly May!  I am not  impressed with the ‘oh well, it’s good for the garden’ platitudes.  The weeds are growing voraciously as it is and do not need encouragement.  I think we all need some sustained sunshine and warmth – longer than the odd day or two.
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Despite this, it's been very busy.  I shan’t even mention work because that is always manic and generally unbelievable. Just read the UK news headlines regarding the mess that is the public sector (education, health…) and be assured that – at grass-roots level – it is falling apart. ‘Nuff said.  

At home, whilst it’s not manic, there is always something to be done.  However, I love pottering about and we have been having (another) small purge of all the “stuff” that has accumulated in the shed and greenhouse, as well as the ‘spare room’.  We are guilty of keeping things that we think we might repurpose (that’s a very ‘in’ word, isn’t it?) and then a few months later it ends up in the recycling anyway.  A friend is currently establishing a new charity shop in Gloucester and therefore my car is stuffed full of goods that will, hopefully, be of use to someone else as well as garnering funds for a worthwhile cause.  It also means we might have room to swing-the-cat in the cottage too?!

​Talking of which, Colin-the-Cat (CtC) is certainly our most talked about subject at the moment!  This is the cat who has adopted us – when it suits him.  He has been on the scene for about two years and has wrapped us around his paws – which have sharply honed claws when he is so inclined.  It comes to something, though, that we cook-up chicken thighs for him!  In all honesty, it is cheaper to do this than buy cat-food which actually works out more expensive, and generally is ignored with a hoity incline of the nose! 

 However, what CtC deigns to leave the small contingency of blackbirds, finches, robins sparrows, wrens and, of course, Johnny and Mary (the pigeons) fight over.  Never a dull moment.

So, as well as talking to the cat, I can also be found conversing with the seedlings and small plants developing in the greenhouse and congratulating the progress of the perennials and herbaceous plants in the beds.  It was only five or six weeks ago that everything looked so bare, brown and dank but now it’s fairly brimming with vitality.  What a difference…. thank goodness!

Oh – by the way - apricity means the warmth of the sun in winter or on a chilly day!