Froggy went a-courting

To quote the inimitable Tom Lehrer:

Spring is here, spring is here,
Life is skittles and life is beer.
I think the loveliest time of the year is the Spring...

OK, well I'm not so sure about the skittles and beer.* Come to think of it I'm not that sure about the spring now it's been p---ing it down all afternoon. However, this morning spring certainly seemed to be in the air when I toddled out into the back garden to dump the veg clippings into the compost. The weather was mild with occasional bursts of sunshine and all sorts of spring flowers and bulbs finally putting in an appearance to brighten the place up a bit, and the trees coming into leaf (and/or flower), and the many amphibious denizens of the garden frantically shagging all over the place and turning the pond into one gelatinous wobbly mass.





Of course by the time I was actually free to go out into the garden and play, the heavens had opened and all the flowers were bent double and dripping. The frogs haven't been put off at all by the rain though; indeed they have been positively frolicking in it. Our garden is frog central at the moment. As soon as you open the back door the whole garden hops and you are treated to a pleasantly mellifluous frrrrrp, frrrrrp, frrrrrp sound emanating from the bottom (the bottom of the garden that is). Gardening at this time of year can be quite disconcerting as resting your hand on the ground in any place are liable to find that the earth squirms and wriggles under your fingers and then (depending on how much weight you've rested on said hand) hops off looking irritated.



Anyway, whilst the weather was fine, and in the spirit of "hurrah it's spring" I rushed off into the garden with the camera hoping to cheer up the old blog with some pretty pictures. This is to compensate for the fact that once again I have no knitting-related pictures to post. The Twisted Flower pattern didn't not turn up, so I will have to buy it again before I can resume knitting. In its absence I have been working on a Διακοσμητικο πετσετακι (decorative doily) on the train, but haven't got round to taking a photo of it yet as it's still only coaster-sized and looking a bit like an old dishcloth.

The Probably jumper is now almost certainly a jumper but much further from being one than it was because, after trying it on, I decided the colour change fell in an unfortunately emphatic location and ripped back about a quarter of what I had knitted. I bought some buttons for it this afternoon, but I don't think that really counts as progress. The River Stole is just stalled because every time I pick it up I lose my place in the pattern, drift onto the wrong line (they are all nearly but not quite the same and the repeat's too long for me to memorize), and then spend twice as long unknitting and cursing, so for the sake of my blood pressure I haven't touched it for a while.



So for the time being here are some pretty spring flowers. As with much of our house (and indeed my life in general) viewed in tight enough close-up, or indeed from far enough away, the garden can sometime look quite good. When you're in the middle of it, however, you realize the extent to which it's fraying round the edges. However, the fraying sections can wait for Messy Tuesday. I'll continue to pretend a bit longer.

* And tomorrow won't be spent poisoning pigeons in the park either.