Looking at the positive side of this damp, inclement, cold weather, since there's little incentive or opportunity to get out into the garden to begin preparing for summer, at least I had the opportunity to do the spring cleaning without the usual resentment that I was wasting time indoors when the outdoors beckoned.

I was able to complete cleaning out kitchen and bathroom cupboards, and to clean the windows and window screens, and wash the sheer draperies. Makes me feel good to get all that done and over with, and now it is done and over with. The dining room windows with their stained glass shutters make for a little more work, but they're a source of cheerful colour in any season, apart from the pleasure we get looking out onto the front gardens from the dining room.

Things did go a little awry when I began hanging the newly-washed sheers back on the track, as the small eyes that the hooks fit into began to break, just as I managed to fit the hooks into them. Some of the hooks are old and made of metal, but most are newer, formed of a flexible nylon, and since they're a few years old they've become denatured and brittle, susceptible to breaking off. Which means they require replacement.

So a trip to the drapery supply shop has been necessitated and that was rather unexpected. But better weather lies ahead on the summer horizon, and the gardens await my ministrations. Patience, that virtue that seems forever in short supply, is demanded.