Spring is springing springily

Dammit, this isn't working at all. I just can't switch off that side of my brain that wants to blog things. I've tried writing things down elsewhere, and it still doesn't work. Go figure. There's something about the knowledge that you're writing TO someone that makes blogging all juicy and sparkly. I like writing to you. It's like the letters I never write to people but are still in my head after years and years and years.

And it's Spring. I can stay quiet most of the year, but Spring just gets me bouncing off the walls. In other places in Australia Spring is an abstract concept, but in Canberra it's REAL. The sun is warm, the air is fragrant and cool, and there are tantalising smells and delightful colours everywhere. All the windows suddenly look dirtier (and we're not allowed to wash them) and the car gets covered in rich red dust blown in from the mass ploughing in the Central West.

I find myself succumbing to random acts of cleanliness. The other day Bumblebee was ill, so I threw him out into the back yard with his sleeping bag to lie in the sun and rediscover a box of his old kid's books, and then attacked the inside of the microwave with a toothbrush before settling down to do some work on the computer. I'm now eyeing off the inside of the oven, and it's cringing in response.

Best Beloved and I get about 3 weeks of Spring gardening energy every year, which usually consists of him going out and buying a truckload of new plants that get put in the ground, watered, fed and mulched lovingly and then forgotten about for the rest of the year and they die. I've called a moratorium on new plants. This is the Year of Maintenance, when we try to reverse the look of utter neglect. Honestly, all we need is a car wreck or three to make the place look worse.

Riding the bike is delightful. The gloves are off, the jacket lighter, the Nepalese felt-lined hippy hat that fits under my helmet shoved to the back of the cupboard for another year. Warm fragrant wind through my flippy growing hair... ahh. This is the life. This morning B and I laughed as we rode down the bike path in Lyneham as we watched a magpie swooping a dog who was happily running along under the magpie trying to catch it with his teeth. Such a variant of the usual magpie-swooping-a-screaming-child-on-a-bike scenario.

A short while ago, after teaching my 2nd-year printmaking student class (learning a very loose variant of letterpress, since I only have a total of 24 hours to teach it), I wandered lonely as a cloud down to the Student Union and failed to meet any daffodils. Lots of wattle, though, and just as yellow. I dithered between the spring rolls and the rice paper rolls and chose the latter because, perversely, they were springier. Things like that make me want to write to you.

So bugger it. I can't stay away, although mostly I'll try. It's just too joyous a time of year, even if I am stuck at the bottom of an in-tray.