We saw the year’s first lone swallow last Saturday, and while one swallow doesn’t make a summer, things are harder for Jonathan when the sun shines. He has to stay at his desk staring at what I call the ‘ones and noughts’ on his computer screen while I play outside (his name for my ongoing efforts to tame the garden).
It all got too much earlier this week after the fourth or fifth day of continuous sunshine and so he tried to move the office outside. All very well, but even with the parasol the light was too strong and he couldn’t see the computer screen. The experiment failed and he and all his technical accoutrements had to go back inside.
In spite of these difficulties he’s enjoying a couple of weeks of respite – as the days get warmer we don’t need fires, except perhaps to relieve the evening chill, so he’s off wood chopping duty. However, next week the piscinistes come to open the pool for the summer and the daily maintenance routine will start. But don’t have too much sympathy – unlike the wood chopping (my shoulders are too puny) he could delegate the pool stuff to me. But the bottom line is that he enjoys fishing out the leaves, testing the pH and all that schoolboy chemistry. And a very good job of it he does too.
