Spring is in the air...

It's 5am and I can hear the wind howling down the chimney. It makes a kind of squealing sound in the bedroom upstairs. It's the most wintery weather we've had so far, and yet the light is changing each day, and spring is in the wind...

The mechanical digger finally exited the garden on Saturday, and with it the beautiful topsoil that I loved to feel trickle through my fingers. We've been promised more, if we can just wait a little while. I explore the garden to see what's left behind and find that Hellebores have pushed their way through rubbish and stones, their twisted bodies a travelogue of their journey. The wild birds party with the worms. They stayed faithfully during building havoc and now fly to the eves, their beaks threaded with straw. 

Last week building-work on the house overwhelmed...Three steps forward and two steps back...Conservation Officers and miss-information...New decisions to make and sleepless nights. 

Then nice things...lots of them to calm me down. Lovely mail. The best of all, a Thank You card with daughter's warm words, phone calls from friends and family and books from online shops; nothing deep and meaningful, entertaining mysteries, a Scandinavian crime novel with a murder on a snowy bear hunt, another in a Canadian village. A kind complimentary email from lovely new neighbours, praising our renovation choices and offering to select eggs from their chickens specially for us. Comments from my nice blogger friends, and an amazing 1,758 pageloads on the blog in one day! I don't think that's ever happened before. 

Always trips to and through the villages and countryside are the chamomile that calms my soul (A & H, too). We made time to actually stop on route through Eardisland. The prettiest village with a shop in  a Georgian dovecote. We bought honey biscuits and vintage books.

Then to Leominster with lots of amazing antique shops and our favourite reclamation yard to source lampshades for the kitchen, and maybe do a deal. We found three vintage industrial lampshades in the same grey to match one we'd already sourced from here. We did the deal...a good one, and got one free... Then we found a treat for the birds and plants for the garden. Hoped for, blowsy gypsy grass : gypsophila, Baby's breath, sky blue Agapanthus and pretty pink echinacea purpurea.

We lunched at cosy Empire tearooms. Like stepping back in time for mum's home cooking. Home to catch 1940's black and white movies, and powdery snow fall again whilst pouring over patterns here and stocking up on toasty Icelandic yarn here...

...hope that you are keeping toasty and warm too...

debx