Well hello February fill dyke black with rain or white with snow according to the traditional rhyme and there's been plenty of dyke filling if not overflowing for many of us this winter, although a visit to the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery to view Benjamin Williams Leader's waterlogged landscape, also entitled February Fill Dyke, will give the spirits a welcome lift.
The steeply wooded part of Izzy's back garden is becoming vibrant with starbursts of bright yellow celandines a sure
fire cure for warts (according to Izzy's granddad anyway), and are the annual precursor to the stunning appearance of the sweeps of bluebells carpeting the ground beneath her woodland trees already alive with the hollow sounding rat-a-tat-tat of the Great Spotted Woodpeckers drumming away in the upper reaches.
It doesn't seem five minutes since Christmas does it and if you haven't yet started on that list of things to do which is growing by the day and which you know you need to get on with, you also know that the longer the list gets the harder it is to get things underway.
Easier said than done though when caught up in this hectic digital age where Izzy, like many busy mums with young families akin to a nest full of fledgling chicks with ever open and demanding beaks to satisfy, is tasked with coordinating and managing this balancing act in between running a business and keeping up with her garden. No such problems for Izzy's dad to whom our digital age is still largely a mystery and who thinks that hashtag and apps is the barely reputable firm of solicitors opposite Marley and Scrooge's counting house in Dickensian Cheapside.
So the theme of February is simply to stop and take stock for a minute, but also to resolve to do just one thing.
Listeners to the late lamented Dr. Michael Mosely's regular Radio 4 slot entitled 'Just One Thing' offering medical advice and tips will be familiar with this concept where he would propose that we undertake a single specific act, consume a food, drink or do an exercise all of which were eminently do-able and would contribute even in a small way to our mental or physical well being.
So, just choose one thing from your 'to do' list which you know very well can be successfully tackled without spending two hours in the garage looking for the necessary right tool, screws or batteries and just do it, whereupon you will greatly benefit from an overwhelming feelgood factor.
Oh, and just one more thing - don't get carried away by your achievement and score an own goal by being tempted into doing one or more of the other listed items. Wallow in your ringfenced success with a cup of tea and your feet up...at least until the fledgings' beaks start snapping again.
