A short month and a busy one

With spring catching up from being six weeks late, meaning plenty of catch-up in the garden, and work getting to that stage of a release cycle, amongst other distractions, I'm building up a backlog of things to post about. But this will just have to do for the time being.

An odo reading of 6365.2 means 253.5 miles cycled -- highest monthly total so far (excluding holiday miles) despite rain and events that kept me at home on some of the best fine days, and on the road for the cool, cloudy ones.

Spring may be here

In warm sunshine today, I mowed the lawn for the first time this year, and do a bit more hoeing and weeding. The cherry tree looks like it will burst its buds soon, ahead of the plums, which is unusual.

And that won't be the only bit of catching up needed in the garden. Hardy plants can start emerging from the greenhouse, and seeds get planted, in the coming days.

Hints of spring

Even though on Friday, when cycling home, there were still patches of snow in the more sheltered ditches, the weekend has started to feel warmer, at long last. I even managed to start pottering in the garden, removing moss and straw from some of the beds, pruning the dogwood, and planting out narcissi that had bloomed on the window-sill six weeks ago.

Q1 cycling

I'm up to 6111.7 on the odo, or 519 miles on my bike, plus 85 on the hire bike for last week's holiday, so 604 miles total in the quarter, compared with last year's 344 by this point.

The downside is that having cycled in snowy/slushy conditions, I clearly picked up a fair bit of salt from gritted roads, as there's a lot more surface rust on the various fixtures and fittings, and the dérailleurs -- let alone the chain -- have needed continual attention to keep from seizing up.