A Spring in My Step

I had a hair appointment on my birthday! It felt like a fantastic present particularly now after this latest lockdown. My hair was the longest it’s been in twenty years. It was definitely time for a chop.

Perhaps I was thinking about hairstyles as I looked out my window this morning? A bit of a wind today and the Laurel bush is waving like a shaggy monster from The Muppet Show. The breeze is rippling through the bronze tint on the Beech hedge and the bobbed Kilmarnock Willow is showing off streaks of green through it’s mane.

Each year I have the discussion about when the leaves will appear on the trees. I always think Spring comes earlier than it actually ever does – perhaps too optimistic? So I look out of my window to check what’s happening in the garden and every morning I try to read a poem. ‘A Child’s Song in Spring’ by Edith Nesbit summed up exactly what I was thinking one day.

Signs of Spring are coming and a blue tit is nesting in the bird box hopefully kept warm by our dog, Molly. Having brushed Molly, we put the fur from the brush into an old bird feeder and recently spotted the birds collecting it to line their nests. In no time at all the feeder was empty. Molly is one very well groomed dog these days!

I recently downloaded an App: Merlin, which is helping me to identify the birds I see in the garden and out and about. I love the way their calls and songs are available to listen to as well. To top it all I was totally delighted to receive a pair of binoculars for my Birthday. I had a sudden flashback to childhood and trying to use my parents’ binoculars and now at last, I have my own! So with the App and the binoculars, I’m pretty sure the pair of birds who scurry around our garden are dunnocks.

So with my newly cropped hair, my binoculars in hand, I’m off for a walk with a spring in my step. Here’s to life as a twitcher!

I’m reading ‘Golden Hill’ by Francis Spufford and ‘Flight’ by Vanessa Harbour. Still reading Muriel Spark’s autobiography.

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