Sleep is still required

Winter's still messing with us a bit here. I almost went out without my hat and scarf today. That would have been a mistake. It's still cold. It's still only the end of January.

But.

It's changing. The sun is just that little bit higher in the sky. And this morning, when it was clear, I noticed the sun shining on the south-facing wall of our garden for the first time in a while.

The rest of the garden is still asleep. We're coming to the end of the first year of knowing this garden. We first saw it in February last year and then spent a few months dreaming of it becoming ours. I know that there's lots that will start coming back in a couple of months, but for now it's mostly bare and brown, except for the olive trees.

Perhaps we should still be sleeping too. Not setting goals and ambitions for the next year. Not obsessively measuring our achievements. Sleep, walk, write, eat, repeat.

Some of the birds are waking up around town. I see a steady collection of magpies and crows, the wagtails who live by the old bus station and the robin who lives in Flower Lane. Then there are the ones I hear as I pass. I can't identify them, but someone was very excited, it seemed, up in the eaves or in the ivy on an old house I passed today. I also heard something else chit-chitting in the riverside meadow on my way back.

I've been exploring Pewley Downs a little. Walking up Pewley Hill and today along Warwick's Bench. That's a nice walk from town. Along Warwick's Bench, down Echo Pit Lane to where it becomes Pilgrim's Way (there's a house there called "Narnia") and then over Shalford Park to the water meadow and home. It's great to be able to get up so high so quickly and see the whole of the town and the countryside beyond. When Steem hit's $1,000 perhaps I'll power down for a few weeks and get a house up there :)

It's hard to imagine after you've walked up the High Street, that there's another massively steep hill (I'm sure they weren't this steep when I was 21) that you can climb, but it's true, you can just ask my lungs!