Look Up Look Down in sunshine

 

Celebrating the arrival of some warmer weather and blue skies – buds on the trees, daisies and going out with no boots or socks (my feet feel claustrophobic by the end of winter!)

Enjoying how this meme is providing a vehicle for storytelling, seasonal changes and local details across the different blogs

a spot of spring cheer

I picked up a pack of these lovely bright felt flowers in the craft shop this morning for £1

I’ve hung them by thread in my living room and office/craft room (you can see the edge of my chair)

I smile each time I wander past and see them

What are you doing to bring some spring cheer into your home?

Getting out in the sunshine

We’ve been enjoying unseasonably good weather this week – temperatures in the 20s (centigrade) when they are normally in the low teens. In normal Scottish pessimistic humour my neighbour says ‘we’d better enjoy it because this might be the only summer we get this year’.

And I have been out with a picnic and my kindle – reading the Hunger Games trilogy and loving it.  My automatic picks for somewhere to walk and sit in the sun are all by water.

Walking along the prom at my local beach (I used the timer and sat my camera on a wall and walked away from it – one of my favourite selfie methods)

Beside one of the lakes on the inner-city hill

and by the local recreation lagoon.

[Both collage frame templates are from the Coffee Shop blog].

Do you head for water? or trees?  or ?

Hello spring

Home again. Welcomed by this fabulous display of bulbs in my garden – lots of grape hyacinth and some yellow tulips and daffodils. 

Wonderful blue skies yesterday – so nice after the ever present pollution haze in Dhaka.  This morning opened the blinds to fog although it is clearing now. 

seasonal eating

I was talking to a friend from New Zealand last week and he asked about my Fejoa chutney recipe.  I was transported back to the taste of fejoas which are abundant for about a month each year.  They have a wonderful fragrant but sharp taste and make good jam and chutney.  The fejoa bruises easily so the fruit is not exported or stored.  I looked back at my 2009 April photos, when I was living in New Zealand and sure enough I had a photo of fejoa and apples in my fruit bowl.

Looking at that fruitbowl I know that it is from April because those red apples and fejoa are only available in the southern hemisphere autumn.
By contrast my fruit bowl now could have been taken at any time during the northern hemisphere winter and spring – satsuma and pears and pretty constant for months and don’t shout spring at me.  In fact one of my photo a day photos from April last year, when I was in Australia shows oranges and pears in the supermarket

I like the seasonality of fruit and vegetables. I like to mark the seasons through all of my senses, including taste. I don’t buy out of season fruit even though there are lots of strawberries in the supermarket at the moment.

buried treasures

My front garden is bursting with colour.  Most of the flowers are bulbs so have been buried treasure since I moved into the house in July. Each morning is a treasure hunt as I survey the garden for new flowers.  The recent rain and now sun has really brought the blooms out.