Hello Spring...

There is a particular kind of light that arrives in early spring. It's not bold or showy. It simply slips through the window a little earlier than it did the week before, rests on the kitchen table and makes everything look gently illuminated. It's like we notice things again (including dust - oops).

The mornings are still cool. It still rains. But something changes.

Snowdrops bow out to daffodils... They stand tall along roadsides and in gardens, so cheerful against often grey skies. And the first brave washing lines appear again across back gardens. Windows are opened a fraction wider. On walks, the air somehow even seems to smell a little different - damp earth, green shoots, moss.

Spring doesn't rush. It unfolds quietly - bud by bud, leaf by leaf. The birds seem to sing a little longer each day.

My memories of this time of year involve starting to feel too hot on the way home from school in my big winter coat... but not being allowed out without it! "You'll catch cold! It's not summer yet!"

I remember bowls of hyacinths we'd planted before Christmas lining the windowsills of our classroom in school. The smell was beautiful and to this day, when I smell hyacinths I'm somehow six years old again.

A nature table would appear in the classroom as a celebration of spring - there would be feathers, pussy willow branches and an old bird's nest which I would always marvel at. We'd make collages and paint pictures of spring flowers... Do you remember making those pictures out of tiny balls of screwed up tissue paper?!

After the clocks moved forward, I'd relish the extra daylight, riding my bike up and down the street. I remember cherry blossom petals lining the gutter and the happy sound of birdsong. Things felt different - not quite winter, not yet summer. The promise of sunny days to come...

As Spring took hold a little more, I remember the scent of bluebells in the wood, the tinkling of the ice cream van on a Sunday afternoon and walking down to the park again. The metal frame of the slide and monkey bars would feel freezing against my hands and it would invariably start to rain but of course, as a child none of this mattered. There'd be an argument with my mum over whether or not I had to wear my coat and as we walked back home I might have to be gently reminded not to pick the flowers growing in the park.

These are the memories that return to me as the light grows a little each day and I hear the wood pigeons softly cooing in the morning. Perhaps that’s what I love most about the seasons changing - it isn’t only the light returning, but the certainty that it always does.

Each year winter loosens its hold and spring steps forward once again. Much as I love winter I'm so happy to see these familiar, happy little things once again.

Hello Spring.