Spring is coming. Slowly

On Friday afternoons, there's no school and the children always come to us. Biggest Granddaughter wanted to paint with her hands. I hate getting dirty hands and so my instinct was to say it would be better to use brushes but... in fact there was no reason not to allow her so I did - even though she painted the backs of her hands too - hmm. Award me some Granny points, please! 

Though it's still January, just, there are definite signs of spring, such as the snowdrops in the garden and also the beginnings of colour in some crocuses. After the recent snow, it was quite mild today, and sunny, which was cheering. 

We walked along the river, which was still rather full and fast, presumably with snow still melting off the hills.  

We saw a cormorant (or possibly a shag, but Daughter 1's father-in-law thinks it's a cormorant and he knows these things) sitting drying its wings. We've never seen one here before - herons, yes, but not cormorants. People stopped and watched it and we had the cormorant/shag discussion. Human contact!

Up we climbed to the art gallery,

where, rather to our surprise, there was still ice on the pond. 

And then home, 

with the sun in our eyes. 

So it's all right really, but we do miss the absent family and, sadly, have no immediate prospect of seeing them. 

With the home-schooling and two evenings of choir Zoom and time spent emailing friends that I'm not seeing just now, I'm no longer making much progress with the photo cataloguing. I actually hit a bit of a wall when I got to the photos of my parents and their friends, in their oldish but still vigorous age, on lovely holidays in Crete and Tenerife and Madeira and so on. I know that they were very lucky with their friends and holidays and no one lives for ever, and I need to get a grip - but it did make me sad so... a break from that isn't a disaster. Except that the kitchen is rather full of piles of photos... which I'm not putting away because every evening I plan to get back to it. 

But possibly not tonight.