Yesterday I exercised a while, enough to run out of puff, before I had to run off on a small variety of errands. I trimmed the errant and rampant mahonia back, at the side, so that I can get to the new little Garden shed without. slashing my face to shreds. And I raked out some dead leaves, deadheaded all last year’s brown hydrangea blooms, and eliminated some sports off a rose tree or two. Oh, and transplanted a weedy cedar sapling into a more felicitous position at the back of the garden. But my efforts were as nothing compared to the diligence of our friendly gardener, who rose to the challenge of getting our front garden ready for spring.

Your Victorian rope tiles, he opined, are all mis-aligned and some are falling over. I know, I know, was my sheepish response — I think I must have been too tired to do the job properly when I worked on them last spring. I did get the right side pretty straight, I mused in expiation. So in the bright sunshine, he set to and tidied up the borders as well, making a nice edge with the moss-filled lawn. It’s work that must be done with care not to dislodge the new emergent shoots from buried bulbs, or the tender leaves ready to burst forth with warmer days.

But as little as I did, at least I did something, and more to the point, I can be immensely grateful for the gardener’s attention. I was away carrying two big dumpy bags of cuttings and dead leaves to the household waste recycling centre, where I disposed of the green waste as neatly as I could. And then back home, via the Kitchen supplier centre where I was so pleased to offer up our perspective on a new kitchen in a more budget-conscious way.

All around us, the sounds of energetic work in preparation for spring are echoing. Weren’t the garden birds in a twitter over our efforts too! Their calls from the safety of the mahonia’s prickly leaves seemed quite agonised. And the old house has seen an internal supporting wall come down, with an excellent haul of original granite building stones, so that the new kitchen can materialise from the detritus of the old.

It’s all hustle and bustle, and no matter that I am usually happy ensconced here in my warm eyrie with fingers dancing over the keyboard, yesterday was a good day for getting out and about in the fresh air. My joy, though, was a kind of vicarious pleasure in the good work of someone else, and the delight in thinking that we’ll be more likely to see the shoots when they poke themselves through the chilly soil, now that the beds have been titivated.

Getting ready for the joys of spring.