The palm is trimmed

You can tell that spring is really on its way. The out two rows of lav2 have been fully weeded. The two inner rows should get finished tomorrow if Gill has her way and she probably will. The farmboy twins have been rigging up a new set of lavender drying wires in Gill's potting shed. Visions in red, all three. The bench on the sun terrace has been rubbed down and Gorried - 4 coats in al - and the new bench will be erected tomorrow after a swift trip to Lidl's.

Life is getting going all around us too. Palms are being trimmed. Oleander is being pruned. Flower beds at the hotels are being weeded. New walls are going up. Old walls are being painted. Windows are being cleaned and carpets hung out and beaten. We are into Lent - the vernal equinox is with us and daylight saving time starts this weekend. The carage is being dried out and cleaned out and re-organised.

Electricity has been run out to the potting shed. Painting the walls next. And running gas tubing so that we can have the cooker gas cylinder outside - away from the kitchen. There is so much to do and we have to get the bulk of it out of the way before the real heat starts up.

The roadsides and the old vegetable plot are covered in beautiful purple flowers from the borage that grows like weeds. Finally the yellow flush that oxalis gives the valley is giving way to a wave of new colour. The backwash is still a garish green but Gill's nasturtiums are flowering in the front garden and pushing through the grasses and the wild carrot. A vivd orange one has nudged its way up through the fennel that comes back every year next to the "not jacaranda".

We have busy days coming up but still we've found time to take the girls, now their seasons are done and dusted, to the desolate beach where they picked through the dead sheep and uprooted bamboos that litter what will, within a month, be a perfect sunbathing beach. Everyone has a lot to do before the tourists start to arrive. But what the hell - we have spring to help us out of bed and into work-mode.