Spring has arrived. Sure, the trees are in bloom and all, but the real pink flags of spring are in other places:

• Half-empty foil blister packs of antihistamine tablets on the kitchen countertop.
• Fresh hanging laundry be-speckled with white Kleenex clumps because I forgot to check the pockets for used tissues. Again.
• Magpies watching from their high perches with the beady-eyed intensity of a Flock camera. I have not yet been swooped this season, but I can see them planning trajectories and making target aquesitions.
• Dog in thunderstorm hypervigilant alert mode.
  He does not bode well when Thor visits. Running to hide in the shower, he gives us a good 30 min warning of any incoming storms.

With predictions of a wild summer ahead, we have re-built our vegetable garden with the goal of improved resilience and productivity.

We still do not have any water collection tanks (mainly because I have been too indecisive as to where we should locate one) or solar panels (mainly because I have been too procrastinative to sort out the installation).

Narrator: Ian would soon regret his irrational laziness…but for now let us watch him enjoy the quiet spring days unfold. The plot would thicken soon enough.

I took these two photos in my back garden. I also took some colour shots…which makes way more sense right? But for some reason, even though the spring palate is rushing in all around me, I still prefer monochrome.