On the turn

We had another few centimetres of snow overnight but this afternoon, the first sign that this God-awful weather system has moved on, as temperatures climbed to a heady 8 degrees. The melt has started and probably over the weekend we will see the streams and rivers reach breaking point as the massive quantity of meltwater makes its way down from the mountains.

But here and now, it is time to take stock. From a 'growing' point of view, I am thankful that I had the foresight to protect the new cornichon plants with upturned plant pots and the young sweetcorn plants and curcurbits with plastic bottle halves. They have escaped the snowy onslaught unscathed. The same cannot be said for the rest of the potager - the cloches that were supposed to protect my new sowings collapsed under the weight of the snow and I was quite patently stupid to even think that I could plant out the tomato plants before mid May! I should have listened to the locals - I blame the intoxication of the fantastic hot weather that we were enjoying, before Winter decided to give us one last, painful and totally unexpected metaphorical slap!

In fact, I am feeling generally pissed off at the moment - not only am I decidedly unhappy about the blow that the weather has dealt us from a potager and 'growing stuff' point of view, but I have pulled a muscle in the back of my neck/into my shoulder, probably when throwing a ball for the dog the other day (I did exactly the same thing last year for goodness sake!). This means that I am going to have to restrain from all physical activity until it is sufficiently fixed and no longer giving me pain. So no biking (not that the current conditions are exactly commensurate with col-bashing and the turbo-trainer is now out of action due to the power unit blowing up (or something) and tripping the circuit when we had a power-cut when Andy was using it this afternoon - gah!), no running (not that there will be anywhere snow-free around here for the coming few days but let's not let details get in the way of a good moan) and no clearing of snow or sorting through the fallen wood around us. A sedentary few days ahead and I don't 'do' inactivity particularly well. Anybody got a dose of patience they can spare me?!