I was walking along to the shops a few days ago and I don’t know if it was the early morning sun (yes it was sunny!) hitting the dew on the plants or what – but suddenly everything smelled of springtime, all fresh and green. It seems that spring is here and for once we really can’t complain about the winter because it was an unusually mild one. The only snow I’ve seen was at a distance, a smattering on the Pentland hills behind Edinburgh.

I know, having said that we’ll almost certainly get inundated with snow at Easter, it certainly wouldn’t be the first time. But for now I’m just grateful for the sunshine and winds which don’t feel as if they’re whistling through my bones.

My garden shouted to me to come and redd (tidy) it up. So my brown garden rubbish bin is now full to the brim. This photo was taken before the big clean up.

This is the path from the other end. I’ve always liked paths with the slabs placed diagonally and it’s very easy to do. I laid weed suppressing fabric before laying the slabs and then bought bags of river pebbles from a garden centre, although I must admit that I did nick some bigger stones from a nearby beach. Too naughty, but I can’t stop myself from scanning the shore for pretty stones. For me it’s the best thing about going to a beach.

The reason I was out taking photos was because we just had our old cast iron guttering replaced last week with nice new shiny black guttering – and not before time. Half of the old guttering fell down during that second big hurricane which we had last month and as you can see the back wall has been getting really wet. That wall is now part of the kitchen, which was originally the old wash house, the small square window used to be covered with a wooden shutter instead of glass as it was the coal hole/bunker. Unfortunately we couldn’t get the right size of guttering in grey to match the guttering on the left and right sides of the house but I don’t think it looks too bad as they are offset and don’t adjoin the black stuff. As you can see our house is an unusual design, almost as higgledy-piggledy as the ones I was taking photos of in England.

The weather hasn’t been good for the plants in my garden, they haven’t coped well with the mild one day and frosty the next. The snowdrops lasted no time and the crocuses resembled burst balloons after a couple of days of dodgy weather. But these primulas are nice and bright, even if my photo is blurred.