Just a Little Green.

Joni Mitchell... in the words of the wonderful Emma Thompson in Love Actually, "I love her."

I listen to her music frequently and today the sounds of her sweet voice singing one of my favourites made me look around my home for those signs, that fleeting touch of light or hint of colour that tells us spring is almost here. I looked for 'just a little green'...

and found it here in my kitchen where the soft gold of a variegated lemon thyme kept company with the forest green shoots of a pot of rosemary. I also have a jar holding some stems of rosemary which I got reduced at the supermarket with the intention of getting Isabella to pot them up with me to grow more little plants for our garden. Wrong time of year, but who says you have to follow the rules? Just have fun is a better mantra for me.

I looked through the living room window to see the 'grave' as I call the patch Isabella and Daddy planted last year on a day when I was poorly in bed; it looks awful but is packed with bulbs to provide cutting flowers for the house and so many shoots are now pushing through that I feel a little ashamed of the way I snorted with disgust at the sight of this rectangular patch of earth right in the middle of the lawn.

After all, the patch is always a mess anyway as it is where the paddling pool spends the summer so the children can play in it while Davey and I sit in the courtyard watching as we sip a chilled glass or two on hot days when the sun basks the front of our house with its wonderful light.

There will soon be daffodils and narcissi of all kinds, hyacinths and tulips for me to pick, a whole beautiful rainbow to cheer our little house and add some colour to these grey seemingly endless days and all because of those two scamps who disappeared behind my back with bags full of bargain bulbs...hmm, I'm so very glad they did.

Isabella even added some broad beans which are doing well if a little straggly. I feel so inspired by her' have a go' attitude to things and need to remember it is how I feel about life really. Nothing ventured and all that. She saw some beans, had a thought, acted on it and there you go: plants already thinking about producing a few flowers. There's a lesson there somewhere.

So, thank you dear Joni. I felt tired and fed up with winter's grey light

but then I found just a little green.

Just a little green

Like the colour when the spring is born

So prefect and not far so very far away.... x