Despite all this depressingly wet weather there are signs that spring is edging ever closer. February is the month for snowdrops and mine are now showing their faces just to tantalize me. I always find snowdrops amazing flowers. So delicate and able to withstand all that the weather can throw at them. Gales and lashing rain leaves them totally untroubled. So far most of the white flowers are showing in my front garden, but only a few so far in the smaller back garden. These brave bands of white flowers have already endured a week of almost continuous rain and high winds, yet they still look virtually unblemished. Together with small groups of flowering yellow winter aconites, they are beautiful heralds of spring.
My mind is currently occupied with other matters. Yet another hunt is on to find a missing gardening tool. A new pair of secateurs has gone missing, not the first pair to be misplaced by a long way. I seem to have a genius for losing garden tools; I often come across them days or weeks later in the garden looking rather forlorn. Sometimes, if lost in the middle of winter it can be months before I stumble across them. It seems I have to leave a trail wherever I go.
Looking for lost garden tools has been a lifetime pre-occupation. More often I find objects I had completely forgotten existed in the process. I had a minor success only the other day when looking for my secateurs, a scrubbing brush that I use for cleaning out the bird baths was discovered lying on top of a pot. So, my strategy is clear, pretend to look for something else and the object of my search may just turn up.
I shudder to think how many tools have ended up in the local tip, discarded with so much gardening debris. The scenario must be something like this. A sunny morning greets me; I breakfast, and then decide gardening is my job for the remainder of the day. Armed with as much as I can carry in one go I emerge into the warm sunshine. I then tackle each job in order of importance, a little weeding perhaps, staking, replacing worn labels, sweeping up rubbish, and pruning. But somewhere along the way I must get distracted and go off at a tangent. I see something, which disturbs my equilibrium. The shock to my system must be such that I completely forget the job in hand and attend to the fatal attraction of the moment.
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