18...Green shoots of recovery?

According to the radio this week, it is 'officially' the most miserable week of the year, culminating in blue monday. For me however, last week  was worse, I felt sad and grey all week, and very clumsy in the studio, my mood matched the weather. This week though has been better. The sun has shone all week, and although it is cold and frosty it lifts the spirits.

Walking around the acreage, I found the first snowdrops coming into flower. Within a couple of weeks there

will be banks of these all round the garden.

And a little Viola was raising its face to the sun. The days are also noticably pulling out now too....so definitaly better than last week.

Work has gone well in the studio too this week, and I have even managed to get a little ahead of my list.
This is down to the sun shining which means I can get the work out onto the window ledge, and drying off ready for the next stage.

By the end of next week these will be turned into Thistles....well, at least two of them will. One of them somersaulted off the window and into the pear tree..whoops!

I have also been working on the squirting cucumbers....very fiddly.

The headlines in our village this week was that we have reached our 1000th inhabitant. This is big news around here. There has been a huge programme of new house building, and the fields around the edge of our little town have been mushrooming new houses. They are mainly starter homes (although bigger than a starter home would be considered in England), and their architecture is a bit unimaginative. The aim is to increase the size of the town to 1500 inhabitants. The economy here is fragile, Dieppe and Rouen are the nearest places of work and the little shops in the village come and go. We have two hairdressers and two beauty salons which have replaced the bank and the insurance company. I can't imagine where all their customers come from.