I hate March. Gloom doom. All the really bad things that have happened in my life have happened in March. But - as the proverb says -No matter how long the winter, spring is sure to follow. It is now April. And I feel a lot better. Spring is sprung, I have riz. Possibly prematurely, as I met someone on the Dog walk this morning who gloomily predicted the weather was going to turn cold again this weekend.

Bah! Spoilsport. If he's right, I am going to make the most of now. April hath put a spirit of youth in everything said William Shakespeare - so I might join him in discarding my thermals. Not that I know whether he wore thermals. But I expect he wore tights, so that makes us even.

Then I'm off out in the garden.

The year's at the spring
And day's at the morn;
Morning's at seven;
The hillside's dew-pearled;
The lark's on the wing;
The snail's on the thorn;
God's in His heaven -
All's right with the world!
~Robert Browning

First up, my tulips - before they are decimated by the forthcoming yukky weather and Robert's snail.

Tulipa Spring GreenTulips

Then lunch. No bacon sarnies for me today, I think.

Pile of piggies

Then it's off to convert a white sheet into a frock and buy new batteries for my torch, so that I can participate in the Cerealia festival:

Spring, by Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1894): J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. It depicts the Cerealia in a Roman street. Cerealia was a 7-day festival celebrated in ancient Rome in honor of the goddess Ceres. Ovid mentions that Ceres/Demeter's search for her lost daughter Proserpina was represented by women clothed in white, running about with lighted torches. The festival was accompanied by the Ludi Ceriales or "Games of Ceres" in the Circus Maximus. The exact dates of the April festival are uncertain: it may have started on April 12 and ended on April 19 (Or it may have started on the Ides of April, i.e. April 13, or even on April 7.) In April, anyway:

Alma_Tadema -Spring

Then a phone call home to check on the parents back in the glorious Devon countryside.

Spring at Marwood

By which time, given the aeons it has taken to do this post, it will probably be winter again. No matter, for I have sprung.