I know this, because I have started sneezing at 5.30 every morning and the ladybirds
are making shyly indecent suggestions to each other.
Also because my walks by the river have shown the first rabbit, the first heron, innumerable wrens and chaffinches, three long-tailed tits (which I have never seen outside a childhood bird book) and, one freakishly warm and sunny day, two plump trout basking as their reward for surviving winter. But the most beautiful thing I’ve seen was still autumnal.
Here in the Vosges, eastern France, we know it’s spring because it’s stopped snowing and started raining.
Oh. I had alwasy thought of the Vosges are rather romantic, perhaps because of reading lots of Nicholas Freeling. Still, cold weather does the trout no harm.