Using a perfect day...

When we got into our car at the end of the afternoon today, the thermometer read 19ºC - and by then the sun was off the car altogether. I guess it's spring - for now anyway. With brilliant skies from the moment I first opened my eyes around 6am to see the orange pre-sunrise streak above the hills to the incredibly bright moon that I've just tried to photograph when I was locking up, it's been simply perfect.

Of course I went crazy. That's what you do when a day like this happens. So this morning I washed every towel in the house and hung them out, having first tightened the floppy wire on the new whirligig and allowed myself a wee smile at the thought of what Wildwood might have to say about my obsession with line drying. I made the dough for my first sourdough loaf in ages - it's all right: I've been feeding the starter meantime - and told a joiner who lives along the lane what I want him to do about my kitchen cupboard. A quick coffee and I was out to start pruning things that have begun to sprout alarmingly - why does pruning make my lower back ache so much? That slight bending forward over a waist-high bush ... And I tackled the infuriating strands of bramble that somehow tangle themselves among the hydrangeas.

We couldn't eat lunch outside because (a) I needed a really comfy chair and (b) there was a joiner (not mine!) working next door with his radio playing incessantly, interrupted occasionally by the most foul screeching noises as he did something with metal. I think. But the sun was shining invitingly and I couldn't rest ... not yet.

So we headed off to Brackley Point, left the car on the grass and walked along the loch side road for a couple of miles. I have  a feeling we did exactly the same a year ago today - it's something we don't do in winter because the sun leaves that end of the road too early in the afternoon. There were great drifts of daffodils among the dead bracken - who on earth planted them there? - and last year's berries still a dull red at Inverchaolain. That's where I took the photo here, as the sun sinks behind the hill and behind Inverchaolain Church, now alas no longer a church but with what is paradoxically called a live graveyard surrounding it. 

For once I feel I've filled a day profitably - but I'm sore in every inch!