Moving on from winter

 It's usually some time in April when we start to feel a bit warmer, and as if winter has finally come to an end. Not that we experience 'real' winter here; there's no snow, rarely any ice, and the sun usually shines at some point. But the houses feel cold, with the high ceilings and tiled floors. 

At the end of March I was still wearing two warm layers in the house, sometimes three. I wore a knitted hat and sometimes gloves when going out for a walk, morning or evening. We were using our microwave wheat bags every night, the heating was coming on when the temperature dropped too low, and we were snuggling under our double thickness duvets at night. 

Then we spent just over two weeks in the UK, where it was chillier but mostly sunny. The houses, with carpets and better insulated walls, are rather warmer than those in Cyprus. We had heard that Cyprus had had a major dust storm and a lot of rain while we were away. But when we came back, it felt significantly warmer than it had at the end of March.

The first night back, we threw off the thinner part of the duvet, just using the medium one. We didn't even think of using wheat bags. In the morning, I only wanted one warm layer, and when we went out for walks I had no need of hat or gloves. We had turned the heating off before we travelled: we've seen no reason to turn it on again since returning. 

So - once I'd recovered from the brain-fog and exhaustion that I always feel for a few days after returning to Cyprus from the UK - I did some extra laundry, and then packed away the two blankets we use when watching DVDs in the winter, and the wheat bags. 

I also washed my winter coat, and hung that in an upstairs closet, along with hats, gloves and scarves. And I packed away Lady Jane's knitted bed, which she hasn't been using for at least a month.

Tomorrow I expect to switch the medium duvet for the thin one. 

Yesterday afternoon I did some weeding of the plants on our front porch, something I had not done in a while. It was long overdue, and I filled an entire green bag with the weeds, and some dead leaves and branches of plants. I also realised that it hadn't rained for about a week, so I watered the plants, too. I had to use a watering can as there's still a hose-pipe ban here, despite the reservoirs doing much better than they were at this time a year ago. 

And I'm delighted that there is yet another bird of paradise bloom on our plant: