Christina Hollis: Put on a Happy Face...

DD's house, plus two rivers merged into one!

I don't know about you, but I'm finding world news harder and harder to take these days. Australia suffered bush fires then flooding. A lot of the United Kingdom is still sodden wet after devastating floods—this is a picture of my daughter's home: the railings run along the banks of the Gloucestershire Avon, while the line of trees in the distance is on the far bank of the Severn.  The two rivers merged into one and the floodwater eventually rose to within six inches of her front door. And of course there's coronavirus everywhere. 

It would be unreasonable to expect nothing but good news and we can't stick our heads in the sand hoping everything will go away, but it's not unreasonable to want a little bit of good news among all the bad, but here's my contribution to making the world a marginally better place for a moment or two...

Spring is on its way. The apricot in my greenhouse is already in flower. It looks so pretty, it cheers up the greyest days and would be worth growing even without the prospect of eating fresh apricots warm from the sun by midsummer!

Much to our relief we have a pond full of frogspawn. The frogs and toads usually start

Pic via Pixabay

croaking from the water in the first few weeks of the year. They hadn't made a sound until a week ago, and we thought this was going to be the first year since we dug the pond that there would be no tadpoles. Then all of a sudden there was a few days of frantic activity an now we can look forward to a new generation of amphibians to gobble up the slugs and bugs around the garden. 

Pic by E. Jagdman

I've heard the first of the summer birds in the wood. A willow warbler was tuning up the other morning, despite a freezing breeze. It didn't sing for very long, but for a minute or two it felt like summer wasn't too far away...

Christina Hollis's first non-fiction book, Struggle and Suffrage in Bristol is published by Pen and Sword Books. You can find out more about that here, catch up with her at https://christinahollisbooks.online, on Twitter, Facebook, and see a full list of her published books at christinahollis.com