Woo hoo spring has arrived (I think). We had a lovely sunny day today, with Mrs B singing and dancing in the flowerbeds because she could do some weeding after a couple of weeks of rain.

One job we tackled was ‘big pruning’. This involves Mrs B walking round the gardens pointing at dead branches, and me lopping them off with a chainsaw. We both enjoy this kind of work – her because it improves the garden, me because I enjoy looking all tough and rugged with a chainsaw in hand.

The highlight was a bunch of pampas grass plants, about two metres tall. Last year she had spent a long time cutting them back by hand, this year 30 seconds with a chainsaw worked very nicely thank you. Neither of us were sure whether you can compost pampas grass cuttings.

Next stop was the mimosas. We’ve waited five years for these to flower, after they were all nearly killed by the cold the year we arrived, and have resprouted as shrubby bushy plants. Well we have a few flowers this year, but we also have a driveway blocked by mimosa, so they needed a good chop as well. Cars visiting recently have preferred to drive all over our grassy verge rather than through the overhanging mimosas, which is starting to turn the grassy verge into a First World War trench, so something had to be done.

After all that excitement and a great big bonfire to celebrate, it was bike ride time.

Well, I can’t say we (me and one of my cycling colleagues) looked too impressive after a couple of months off our bikes. Despite the sunshine there was quite a strong wind and it was all we could do to keep moving, let alone achieving a plausible speed, and that was on the downhill. I won’t describe what we looked like struggling uphill, hurricane in our faces. That of course was on the outward journey.

The return, with the wind behind us, and we were sailing along at 45kmh without needing to pedal at all. Now that is my kind of cycling.