In my easter bonnet

It's been a better week here in London. Work has calmed down a lot and I'm finally starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. When I go back after this long weekend, I only have eight days of work left in the old job, which is very exciting. 

For the moment, though, I'm not going to worry about work as I'm in the midst of a gloriously long four-day Easter weekend. I'd usually be up in Edinburgh, but I'm going up for each of the next two weekends and three in a row seemed a little much for both my bank balance and tolerance of sitting on trains. So instead, I'm spending the weekend pottering about the flat. While I'm missing home tremendously (it's been more than five weeks since I was there), it has been good to finally get down some of the things I've been meaning to do (and working to hard to do) for ages. The spring clean has begun!

I started, of course, with the essentials - like hanging up this chicken which arrived in the post from Mum....

... next to the slightly serious-looking bunnies (dressed in the Easter best) which she sent me last year. I haven't got an Easter tree this year, but the pussy willow stems are doing a sterling job. Unfortunately, they are too flimsy to hold up my wooden eggs, but the stuffed fabric ones are doing fine.

We then proceeded to do all sorts of useful things like clearing out the hall cupboard; going through our huge collection of cables and getting rid of LOTS of USB to mini-USB ones (of which we had about 12); cleaning and dusting everything; and going through our paperwork. All in all, perhaps not the most exciting way to spend Good Friday, but satisfyingly productive.

Today has been a little more restful. When we were in Nottingham for my husband's 30th my mother-in-law gave us some seeds which she'd collected from various sources but not got round to planting. So today I planted seed trays of pansies and penstemon and put some clarkia seeds in a pot outside. I suspect they weren't this year's seeds, but it'll be interesting to see how many of them come up. I don't have my mother's green fingers, but I'm hoping that a little of her talent might have rubbed off!