Monday

37. A Year of Weather in Two Weeks


It’s the year of the British floods — and of course the complaints about the floods. We Brits do love to complain. Certainly the first two weeks that I have to be in London for the intravenous vitamin C there are downpours and gales. The train services have been brilliant given all the challenges that they have faced but I’ve got soaking wet and blown about on London’s streets which are littered with the skeletons of dead umbrellas. Ironically my hostess for those first two weeks, is better clad than I am. She walks her dog on Hampstead Heath every day and has waterproof trousers.
It’s much wetter and windier at home than it is in London but we just ‘do wet’ when we are in Devon. And on the second weekend of being home, there is one glorious day of sunshine and warmth. You know the kind of day - one when you can leave the back door open and the animals can potter in and out as they want.
I was a bit pathetic about the snowdrops when I first set off for Birmingham and London. They are so beautiful  and there are so many of them all through the garden. Most of them are doubles which are no more exquisite than the singles, just differently so. I thought I was going to miss nearly all of their beauty.
However they have lasted for these two weekends home and on this lovely sunny day I spend time just standing and looking at them and adoring them. I do pick some for the altar in the chapel and the living room mantelpiece but they are not the same once they are picked even though you can put a mirror underneath the vase to reflect their loveliness.
I have missed most of the prepared hyacinths though. But when I open up my office/chapel door I am assailed by the glorious scent of the last blue hyacinth still blooming. It almost knocks me over with sensory delight.
The next day it is over. 

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