Even with the aid of the electrical rotary-sanding tool he used, it took three days of intensive work for the job of scraping years'-worth of old stain off the deck floor to enable my husband to re-finish it with the water-proof stain he preferentially uses. Normal home maintenance is a never-ending concern. Spring clean-up takes time and patience.

So because he's been busy with so many things, it took until yesterday for my husband to get around to changing the ice tires to all-weather tires on his pick-up truck. We had the usual verbal tussle, with me wanting him to take the truck in to a shop to get it done, rather than go through the physical labour of doing it himself. But he always dismisses my concerns. And tells me it takes no time at all.

But it did take a great deal of time and effort to retrieve the alternate tires from their winter storage, to trundle them out, ensure they were properly filled with air (they hadn't, as it happens, lost any over-winter), and then take off the ice tires, store them, and replace them on the truck with the regular tires. It's not a huge truck but the tires certainly are, and they're heavy, mounted on alternate wheels, and they have to be adjusted just-so to fit all the holes they're meant to be mounted on. So it is a laborious, time-consuming job that could be done much quicker by a professional. It isn't the cost, it's just that it's a job my husband feels he can do, and he does.

He has taken down all the feeding stations, finally. The bird feeders and the larger feeder that local wildlife have flocked to throughout the winter months. The clean-up after placing out huge amounts of seed and nuts is prodigious. I've been plucking volunteer seedlings out of the garden, leaving only some of the sunflowers that have sprouted. But I'm happy I can reclaim some of the garden beds at the front of the house now.

In the house he's been hanging the sheers for me, after I've taken them down and washed them. Some of those sheers are over 45 years old, bought for previous homes; in fact some of the panels were bought to fit windows of a house we had bought in Toronto, in the late 1960s, and they're in great shape. The glory of the stained glass windows my husband created years ago for this house will of necessity have to be covered by the sheers during the hot summer months, since the heat of sun is magnified through the coloured glass, and the sheers cut that off completely.

Most of the interior spring cleaning has now been completed. And my husband has been busy finishing off the exterior tidying and cleaning up. There's the garage still to be done and he plans to erect the new canopy for the deck shortly, and all of our huge, heavy garden pots need to be taken out of storage, positioned and prepared for planting. Never a dull moment.