Is it spring yet?

I'd like to start by saying that I certainly do believe in climate change.  What is happening to the sea, for instance, and the melting icecaps just can't be denied.  However, and this may be a little controversial, I don't believe that any patch of unusual weather is a sign of climate change.  We've always had it in this country.

In February we had some exceptionally mild weather, but it's not by any means a first.  I remember the odd week in February where I sat in my attic studio with the window open all day.  I can't tell you what years that happened in because they only happen occasionally, but they do happen.  Then we get the rest of winter, which is what we're getting now.

Mike3 used to say, "He who celebrates the first warm day as the start of spring gets the longest spring but he who waits till the last frost gets the longest winter."  I like that.  So I think spring has begun, but slowly.  Things in my garden think so too.  Some of them like this aubretia, have never totally stopped blooming, even in the snow, and now are really starting to come into their own.

Meanwhile, I've been on antidepressants for more than five weeks and I'm pleased to say that I'm feeling a great deal different.  You're not supposed to notice any improvement for a couple of weeks at least but I started to feel better after about four days.  It's difficult to describe but I just knew I had feelings that had been absent for a while. 

It wasn't plain sailing.  I wasn't warned about the possible anxiety as a side-effect and it was most unpleasant.  Luckily for me it wore off after a couple of weeks, which it does for most people though not all.  And then I was back to being myself.

I think I'd been depressed for longer than I had thought at first.  Life things get in the way which can be blamed for how you feel, but now I am doing and thinking things that I'm aware I wouldn't have done in the last six months or so.  It creeps up on you.

What I don't mean is that everything in the garden is rosy.  I'm not on cloud nine or even cloud six.  Life is what it should be if your brain isn't warping it, in other words there are good and bad days, good and bad things happen, and last Friday at a friends drop-in-for-tea afternoon nobody talked about Brexit at all.


At the moment I'm particularly enjoying this tall euphorbia.  Its vibrant green flowers are very long-lasting and have brightened up my garden for a couple of months.  In the background in a tub you can see a shorter euphorbia with pale leaves but still fairly bright flowers.  It's proved to be an ideal tub plant.

PS, there's still another week of Another Beastly Art Exhibition at Nature In Art, from tomorrow till Sunday.