Colour

I've just posted this picture of Sweet Williams to remind myself about summer, flowers and colour. Because here in Edinburgh today it's cold, grey and windy. The garden is mainly a heap of sodden brown leaves and twigs. Various slates lie on the ground, blown off by the gales we suffered on Monday night. (Fortunately they just missed the car. That would have been expensive.)

But one advantage of retirement, I'm finding, is that you do see a bit of daylight even in the winter. Here in Edinburgh at this time of year it's still pretty dark at going-to-work time and very dark at going-home time, and in my teaching days I never had time to look out of the window in between. Now, however, I can do things like - oh, today I went to the dentist (such fun) - and January doesn't seem so bad.

In the summer, in contrast, we have these long, light nights when you can still see to do gardening well after 11 at night. So, to me, the dark days of winter are amply compensated by the light nights of summer.

On the other hand, my Californian bloggy friend Paul tells me that Carmel is rather nice at any time of year...

Talking of the summer and indeed the spring - if you haven't read my previous post about the cats, please do.